The Arlington City Council is expected to enter into a contract today with New Line Skateparks Inc. to design and construct Arlington’s skate park at Vandergriff Park.
The skate park is part of the city’s Skatepark Master Plan, which includes $500,000 to build skating facilities.
Matt Young, Arlington Parks and Recreation assistant director, said the creation of a skate park is in response to community needs.
“Hopefully, we’ll be able to provide what we identified through the master plan as a skate opportunity within reach,” Young said. “We’re trying to provide a skating opportunity within 15 minutes of residents. For a kid, instead of him skating in a street or on a sidewalk, he can just go to the local park.”
Interdisciplinary studies freshman Anthony Coca said he plans to visit the new park once it opens.
“I think it’s a really cool venture,” he said. “It’s good for the skate community to get more recognition.”
Young said construction for the 30,000 square-foot skate park should begin this winter and open some time in 2013. The skate park at Vandergriff Park, about three miles from UTA, will be the most centrally located facility in Arlington. Young said the park will probably include skating bowls and other street-types of terrain.
Cody Rocamontes Inc., a local skate park advocacy group, helped raise funds for the Skatepark Master Plan, Young said. The group was created in 2009 after Arlington resident Cody Rocamontes was struck by a car and killed trying to cross Interstate 20. He was on his way to skate at his favorite location on the other side of the highway. The group received a grant from the Tony Hawk Foundation to also raise funds for a skate park at Randol Mill Park, Young said.
Young said the city hopes to create as many as 30 skate parks and smaller facilities throughout Arlington within 20 to 30 years.
“We realized that in Arlington, as large as it is, one skate park was not going to be enough to meet the needs of our skating population,” he said. “Just as large geographically as the city is without public transportation, how is the average user, a 14-year-old male, going to get there? So we took on the master plan to look at the long term and how can we incorporate numerous skate parks within our community. Through the development of that plan, it was determined that we would have a network of skate facilities.”
Undeclared junior Joe Nguyen said although he doesn’t go to skate parks any more, he thinks it’s a good idea to build one in Arlington.
“Kids just need to skate and have something to do,” he said. “It [Arlington] is in the middle of D-FW, so go for it.”
Young said it’s exciting the city is “catching up” and going forward with the plan.
“Arlington is a little behind the trend of skateboarding,” he said. “So, we’re excited to finally be at the point where we’re talking design and make something happen and fill that recreational need the community has presented to us.”
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Question: What do you think about Arlington having a skate park?
"I think that would be a really interesting idea. It’s very helpful cause there are a lot of skateboarders on campus and they try and make their own like ramps off of like stairs, stuff like that and they could get hurt or run into people who are just going to class."
Angel Gonzalez, mechanical engineering junior
"It would be good cause usually people ride ‘em on like the edges and like that and it's dangerous. So it should make things cleaner and there’ll be less people on the road, sidewalk, so it should be good."
TJ Park, computer science sophomore
"It’s good for some skaters, but I don’t think it’s good image on UTA."
Rafael Castro, criminal justice senior
