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Okotoks puts in bid on mobile skate park

The Town has placed a bid up to $17,000 to purchase a mobile skateboard park from the City of Calgary that would be set up on the south side of Okotoks during the summer.
NEWS-Mobile Skate Park BWC 8478 web
The Okotoks Skate Park on Nov. 28. The Town has placed a bid up to $17,000 to purchase a mobile skateboard park from the City of Calgary that would be set up on the south side of Okotoks during the summer. (Brent Calver/Western Wheel)

Okotoks could be home to a mobile skateboard park next summer.

Town council voted to put a bid up to $17,000 on the purchase of a mobile skate park from the City of Calgary, which is unloading five units with accompanying trailers. The parks were purchased in 2016 and were intended to be staffed and used for programming in the city, but financial challenges deemed them unviable.

The City is now selling its five units, and the Town of Okotoks opted to place a bid with the intention of having a mobile skateboard park set up in different parking lots and spaces on the south side of town for three to five-week periods from May to September.

It coincided with requests from the public to build a second skateboard park on the south side of the Sheep River, said community services director Susan Laurin.

“This is an opportunity that came up,” she said. “They’re (the City of Calgary) looking at auctioning them off from an RFP (request for proposal) perspective. The cost is one portion of it, but the City of Calgary is also looking at how they are going to be used.”

She said the Town of Okotoks stands a good chance at winning its bid, since the mobile skateboard parks would fill a gap for outdoor recreation in the community and access would be provided for free to the public.

“They were purchased for the City of Calgary for free and low-cost recreation and they’d like to make sure people have access to spontaneous use without having to pay,” said Laurin.

One of the goals of the Town and council currently is to provide balanced recreational opportunities on both sides of Okotoks, and this would be one more offering for the south end, she said.

The mobile skateboard parks are a combination of steel frame and wood construction, and purchasing a new steel-built park would be in the range of $60,000 to $70,000, she said.

If the permanent skateboard park outside the Okotoks Recreation Centre is any indication, the mobile park would be well-used during the summer months, she said.

“I can attest to, because I can see the skateboard park from my office window, that it’s busy, and it’s consistently super-busy throughout the summer and it’s a well-utilized amenity,” said Laurin.

While the bid for purchasing the park is up to $17,000, she said the total budget for the mobile unit would be close to $72,500, taking into account staff labour hours required to move the unit and set it up in different locations. She estimated a total of 150 non-permanent staff hours per year to set up, maintain and perform safety checks, and move the park.

The park would not require an attendant to be on-hand, but she said the Town could investigate offering learn-to-skate type of classes through its community programs.

“Those would be registered programs and we would be similar to our existing skateboard park and spray park, and we would not have it manned, we would just do regular checks on it,” said Laurin.

The mobile skateboard park comes with a trailer, which she said would be advantageous to the Town, because it could be safely stored in one of its operations yards during the winter and hauled to different locations easily.

Coun. Tanya Thorn said it was a “unique opportunity,” and an economical way of providing an amenity that has been requested by the public.

“The expansion of recreation on the south side is something I’m certainly hearing a lot of from the community,” said Thorn. “I think this is a good addition.”

Krista Conrad, OkotoksToday.ca

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