A push for a skateboard park in Trail rolled on Monday, when city council awarded the design to a consulting team.
Trail will pay nearly $25,000 to New Line Skate Parks to ink a site drawing for the park to be located by the chain-up area in the Gulch.
Considered a “wheel park,” the recreational environment on Rossland Avenue will be open to skateboarders, roller skaters, inline skaters, scooter riders and BMX riders to develop their technique on a site that is also welcoming to other community members.
“I’m happy and excited. I’ve heard a lot of good things about New Line so I’m excited about that,” said 21-year-old Ashley Escott, who acts as the main youth representative on the city’s skateboard park committee.
“I’m open – pretty much anybody can use it. It will be a facility for extreme sports, I guess that would be the technical term.”
New Line Skate Parks is a full service design and construction firm based out of Greater Vancouver that specializes in the development of integrated concrete skate parks and other progressive “skateable” environments.
Though it has not been responsible for such newer parks in Salmo or Castlegar, Trail was impressed with New Line’s focus on developing landscaping and materials that highlights local setting and heritage, specifically touching on a rock wall concept accompanied by miniature murals on the wall that acts as a backdrop to the lot.
“First of all, the skateboard park design is going to incorporate all the major elements that the committee identified that they wanted,” explained Trail Councillor Robert Cacchioni, pointing to skating structures like a ground dome, rails and banks.
“In that particular design, you would have the major skateboard elements and the areas where we’d have free skating in terms of activities like in-line skating because you have to remember that we’re going to be calling it not a skate park but a wheel park.”
The urban site will tout showers, a playground, a sitting area and year-round washrooms, which will also be available to those frequenting the chain-up area, sani-dump or taking advantage of the Piazza Colombo.
The design is expected to be complete by October, with future budgetary items explored next year.