CRUISING ALONG
Skate park construction is underway
LANSDALE » A major milestone is now behind for Lansdale’s skate park project, and another could come later in March.
Council heard the latest on the skate park construction last week, and could approve the first payment for park construction soon.
“The update that I have is: Construction is going. There’s a lot of dirt moving around,” said Parks and Recreation Director Karl Lukens.
Construction officially started on Feb. 3 on the skate park, located at the borough’s Fourth Street Park, and beginning the final phase of a project that has been up for discussion for much of the past decade.
Lukens gave an update during the parks and recreation committee’s March 4 meeting, and said construction work is now well underway, and the borough’s engineering firm has set up a webcam to take photos every five minutes as work continues.
“I’m getting out there when I can, to get some other up-close, different angle pictures,” Lukens said, and borough staff are working on an online photo album where residents can submit their own pics as the park proceeds.
He and committee chairwoman Mary Fuller said they’ve both been in contact with design firm Fifth Pocket about a mural or mosaic type feature near the park entrance, and could know more by early April.
“We’re just waiting for more detail on what it is, and the size,” Lukens said.
Spring rains do not seem to have slowed
down construction, Lukens told the committee, and those who may have seen large blocks set up next to the skate park site should know: those will go below the rain garden just next to the skating bowls, to help rainwater better infiltrate
underground.
“I’ve never seen one built, but the dirt seems to be moving to the right spots,” he said.
Staff have tentatively begun scheduling events to be held at the skate park in late June, Lukens told the committee, including a roughly two-hour clinic on June 20 for beginners and a one-week camp tentatively scheduled for July 6 to 10
for young skaters.
“We’ll look to do one of those every other month or so, depending on demand, just to make sure we have plenty of skaters who know what they’re doing, and everybody knows how to behave at the skate park,” Lukens said.
Those events could be changed if unexpected delays happen and the opening of the skate park is delayed,
Lukens and Fuller said.
“Perhaps by the end of May, but we’re really looking by the time school lets out, the first weeks of June,” Fuller said.
Fuller suggested staff contact local businesses who typically contribute helmets or equipment to other park programs to ask if they could do so for the skateboarders, and Lukens
said he would do so. She also asked if the borough’s insurance carrier would offer any discounts or bonuses for holding safety programs there, and Lukens said he would look into possibilities.
With construction now officially underway, an action item will be up for council approval later this month: the first payment, to contractor Marino
Corp., for $24,615 for the skate park construction itself. The Parks committee voted unanimously to recommend that payment be approved by full council, which could do so at their next meeting on March 18.
That meeting will be held at 7 p.m. at the borough municipal building, 1 Vine St.; for more information visit www.Lansdale.org.