Skate park to open in November at Upper Cascades

Bloomington skating enthusiasts are one step closer to having their own park. \nLast week the Bloomington Board of Park Commissioners announced the acceptance of a $605,000 bid placed by contractor Dave O'Mara to create a local skate park. The price covers all costs and is in the range the city expected to pay, according to John Turnbull, sports and fitness director of the Bloomington Parks and Recreation department.\nThe final plan includes a skate park measuring 12,500 square feet with bowls, ramps, rails and a beginner's area with a pyramid structure. \nNot all the money will go to the building of the skate park at Upper Cascades as some of it will be used to add other amenities to the park in order to give it a family atmosphere. \n$312,592 will be used for the skate park, while $232,808 will be spent on landscaping, a trail, parking and security lighting, Turnbull said. The remaining $24,900 is going toward alternative basketball courts.\nAfter two weeks of discussing bids as high as $645,000, Turnbull said O'Mara's excellent reputation and competitiveness led to his firm's selection.\nAnother selling point was the involvement of Dreamland Skateparks, the subcontractor involved in the project, which has one of the best reputations in the country for building skate parks. \n"We are really fortunate to have them (Dreamland). Their parks are really good," Bloomington resident and skater Dustin Porter said.\nSince Dreamland is a popular name in the skating community, Porter said the new skate park will likely draw people from all over Indiana and even out-of-state visitors. Previously, Bloomington skaters traveled to other cities such as Columbus, Greencastle, and Indianapolis in order to find a good park. \n"The skate park will be beneficial to the community. People will actually travel to Bloomington to skate," Porter said. "It will be nice to skate with different people passing through the area." \nSince January, local officials have discussed the idea of building a skate park in the Bloomington area with local skaters. They held frequent meetings in which the city worked with skaters to come up with an agreeable plan. The meeting gave city officials and skaters the chance to develop together what types of structures, rules, and hours would be appropriate for the park. \nBloomington resident and employee of the new local skate shop Rise, Justin Kirkwood, went to almost all of the initial planning meetings. \n"We had teleconferences with Ben Schroeder, a representative of Lawrence Moss [the California based architectural firm hired to design the park] discussing park designs. He would give us an initial design and we would tell him what we liked or disliked. He took the design back and brought us new ones until we all agreed," Kirkwood said.\nOnce all the paperwork is completed, the crew is expected to break ground on the new park next week. Opening day is set for mid-November. \n-- Contact staff writer Holly Pilewski at hpilewsk@indiana.edu.