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« taxidriver wrote on Thursday, Apr 22 at 12:50 PM »
Sorry typo's on BRUCE
« tonyhawkfoundation wrote on Wednesday, Apr 21 at 05:39 PM »
Thousands of communities across the country have realized the social benefits of creating a safe, sanctioned place for their youth to skate. With more than 9-million skateboarders nationwide, it's no longer reasonable to continue to create new facilities for traditional sports that already have fields/courts/tracks, and which are actually practiced by fewer people than skateboarding is, and ignore the need for safe, sanctioned places to skate.

In this day and age, more and more youth are choosing individual sports like skateboarding, and communities need to recognize this shift and adapt to it. Telling young skaters that yes, they can build a skatepark, but that they must raise the money themselves is unreasonable. Baseball, soccer, and football players didn't have to build their stadiums.

There are Federal TARP funds available for recreation infrastructure, as well as community block grants. The Tony Hawk Foundation also provides some funds for skatepark construction to qualified communities (www.tonyhawkfoundation.org). The skatepark just needs to be a community priority--the youth and their current needs have to be a community priority.

Yes, the skaters can help plan the skatepark, design the skatepark, and even help fundraise for the skatepark. But to hide behind the myth of liability or lack of funding is to miss the point. If it's important to the community, it can be done. At least it was in 3,000 other towns across the country. Even in this economy.