DeWitt’s skatepark takes shape
DEWITT — For the skaters in DeWitt and those who have supported them, Saturday morning was a day three years in the making.
As pieces of steel and recycled plastic lumber started to come together on a concrete pad to form a new skatepark, some of the young DeWitt skateboarders who had first proposed the idea of building it said Saturday was a dream come true.
“It’s just like Christmas,” said Luke Kelley, 13.
“I feel glad inside,” said Mason Hardin, 12.
Volunteers both young and old were busy in the morning at the skatepark’s location, immediately adjacent to the DeWitt Fitness Center, 900 14th St., on a portion of Ashindel Park.
Bobbi Kelley, Luke Kelley’s mother and one of the volunteers working on the project, said the park had been expected to cost $78,000. So far, $50,000 has been raised to build the park, including a $20,000 grant from the Clinton County Community Development Association, other grants, and a variety of local fund-raising activities.
“They’ve done bake sales... they’ve sold Pampered Chef,” she said of the local volunteers.
Residents are hoping to raise an additional $6,000 to $7,000 for more additions to the park, and “after that, we’ll have to see,” Bobbi Kelley said.
One of the advantages of DeWitt’s skatepark is that it will easily be able to accommodate additional skating elements. Skatewave, a skating company from Delano, Minn., designed the elements of the park,
including a quarter pipe, bank-to-bank element and another bank section.
All of these items sit on a flat concrete pad and are made up of steel and recycled plastic lumber construction, built to deal with outdoor weather. Dan Jackson, a documentation engineer from Skatewave on site who helped with assembling the elements, said the design was part of a new trend in designing skate parks.
“We build them this way for modularity, so you can move them around and add on to them,” he said.
Luke Kelley was one of those skaters who first proposed building a skatepark in DeWitt in 2003. At that time, the closest skatepark was in Eldridge, which led to a lot of travel time, Hardin said. The police also frowned on kids skating in the downtown area, so this required skating enthusiasts to be inventive in finding places to skate.
“We had to go door to door and ask permission from people ( to skate there),” Luke Kelley said.
He also recalled how skaters often had to forage for wood to build their own skating ramps or obstacles.
After the local skaters made a presentation to the DeWitt City Council, they gained city approval for the project and support from its parks department. The city provided the land for the park and gave its support for the group’s fundraising efforts and grant proposals.
“They understood our need for it and the need for something to do,” said Shawn Paarmann, 14.
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