Support your Local Midwest Skate Scene

[Christopher Bara]

A large city just north of Detroit was pushing ahead with building a large skatepark. From what I’ve heard, money was no object, they just wanted one of the best in the Midwest. Now outside interests are trying to put a cog in the gear.
Here’s the article from this mornings Detroit News

Communities should be wary of building public skate parks
The Detroit News /
Farmington Hills is still designing and preparing to raise money for a city-operated skate park. But the city should be wary of competing with private companies in recreation.
Farmington Hills wants to join Troy, Huntington Woods and other communities by building and operating skate parks for the popular sports of inline skating and skateboarding . The design by an Arizona consulting firm is being subsidized by $10,000 from a parks and recreation millage, but the $650,000 construction tab will be privately raised.
Cities have built public tennis courts and ice skating rinks in the past, only to see interest in those activities wane. Farmington Hills should be careful about building a new facility for a sport that may turn out to be a fleeting fad.
Supporters argue that kids may be skating now in unsafe places because they can't skate in downtown Farmington Hills. And some private skate park owners, such as George Leichtweis of Modern Skate & Surf in Novi, see public parks as a way of promoting the sport and creating a safe environment for kids.
But others, like Ray Guisgand of Landslide Skate Park in Clinton Township, say the public competition puts a big burden on private operators, who have higher costs because they run indoor facilities and usually provide adult supervision that public parks don't.
In the summer, free public parks drain away business. And several private parks in Metro Detroit have closed, Guisgand says.
What makes Farmington Hills' idea suspect is that it wants to build the best park in the Midwest. "Skateboarders will travel hours to go to a good skate park," the city's recreation supervisor Bryan Farmer told The News.
By the same logic, hard-core Farmington youngsters should be willing to travel an hour or less to the many decent skate parks around Metro Detroit and save the taxpayers from maintaining their own park.
The one advantage of the Farmington Hills project is it won't put taxpayers on the hook for a lot of money. But the community should scrutinize whether there is a real need for a skate park.

If you have any comment you could send to the people holding influence in blocking this park, please send it to either The Detroit News at letters@detnews.com . Or you can write right to the guy in Farmington Hills who’s in charge of the project bfarmer@ci.farmington-hills.mi.us . Please keep it somewhat professional though….letters from people who’ve had parks built in their communities can carry allot of influence one way or another.
thanks