Bowling Green skateboarders will soon have a new place in town to practice their talent –legally.

Kristin Otley, recreation and events coordinator for Bowling Green, said a skatepark will be built in a 13,000 square-foot section of the city park near the existing hockey rink. The area currently is a rarely-used parking lot for the park and was allotted to the project by the city’s mayor.

Though rough plans have been developed, the job has not yet been put to bid.

Construction, Otley said, is scheduled to begin around October 2010; the length of the project will not be known until bids have been received.

There is currently $55,000 set aside for the development of the park, Otley said. The money was accumulated from a combination of city budget apportionments to the parks district, community donations, grants and grant-matching funds from the city. The largest single funds receipt came from a $20,000 Nature Works grant awarded to the city by the state last November. Another $10,000 was given to the city in the form of a check — donated by a single resident who took a personal interest in bringing the idea closer to reality.

The need for a skatepark was first seriously recognized, according to Otley, around four years ago when the idea was suggested to the city council by members of a group known as the Community Coalition for Youth and Family. These suggestions were taken into consideration with the relative prevalence of skateboarding in the town.

“You really are seeing, just driving or walking around town, there are a lot more people on skateboards,” she said. “There are kids on skateboards, young adults on skateboards, even some adults on skateboards.”

With the need for the park realized, Otley said, it was time to put the concept into motion. The city council assembled a group of local middle and high school students to assist in planning the project. The purpose of the group was to get insight from the local skateboarding community to ensure the final result would be something which addressed skaters’ needs. Input was then balanced with budgetary considerations and a plan was born.

Skateboarder Rory Sheeks, 20, was a member of the skatepark group four years ago when he was a sophomore at Bowling Green High School. He attended monthly meetings at the Bowling Green Community Center with the mayor, the chief of police and various other city officials. At these meetings he would provide his ideas, critique proposals from others and work toward compromise to arrive at a plan all could agree on.

Sheeks’ involvement with and knowledge of the event tapered off as he later transferred to a vocational school, but his interest was rekindled when he returned to that same community center where he once debated the issue and saw T-shirts for sale promoting the park.

“Kids are getting kicked out of more and more places, people are putting up signs that say ‘No Skateboarding,’ they think they are just there to vandalize,” he said. “They really just want a place to go to have fun, skate, chill.”

Otley said certain residents voiced concerns that putting a skatepark in town would attract a negative crowd. Otley said she believes these worries come mainly from misconceptions, and she hopes the high visibility of the park will help break down these walls and foster a better level of understanding.

“I think people who have never been exposed to [skateboarding] may stop and say: ‘Wow, that takes a lot of athleticism to do that,'” she said. “It’s a sport just like any other.”

Junior Cody Evans has lived in Bowling Green his entire life. He has skated for seven years and has felt the resentment some members of the population feel toward skaters. Despite the sport’s negative stigma, the thrill skateboarding provides compelled him to make it part of his life.

“You get that adrenaline rush, that sort of natural high, just knowing you can conquer something that seems so difficult,” he said. “Just to be able to sort of defy gravity, even if only for that split second, feels so nice.”

Evans stands alongside Otley in the belief that a high-visibility skatepark could facilitate a greater understanding of the sport in the community.

“I think it would really help bring the community together,” he said. “Once you have [a skatepark] you have people understanding that you can level with people you thought were just being delinquents… if you give them the adequate environment and the tools they need, they will take advantage of that.”

The park is planned to be self-governed, all concrete and, pending the behavior of its participants, will have both day and nighttime hours, Otley said.

Evans’ vision for the park is one of a place free of hassle and prejudice.

“Ideally, I want it to be somewhere anyone can go,” he said. “No discrimination — race, age, gender, anything like that.”?

Evans said the public animosity often directed at skateboarders can make them feel unwanted, especially for the sport’s younger athletes.

The community feels the park could give to the local skateboarding population, he said, and will create a healthy environment for young skaters by providing a “diverse atmosphere” where they can “find friends and feel wanted.”

For more information about the park, or to get involved with fundraising, students can contact Otley at [email protected].