A group of Muncie residents have teamed up and are working towards building a skatepark in the city through the Muncie Skatepark Initiative.
“The skatepark will give some of the kids, teens and even adults for that matter, a place to go," said Josh Perkins, a landscape architect who will be overseeing the skatepark. "This is gonna give those kids something to do, and furthermore it’s gonna give folks like myself who have young children, a place to go and teach them to skate.”
Perkins thinks the skatepark would make a great addition to the community.
"There is a need for this in this community. Skateboards are not allowed to leave the ground on campus, we’ve got these parks around town and some have nice finished concrete, some have limestone – that stuff’s expensive, and right now we know that some of that is being damaged,” he said. “The problem is they don’t have a place to go. They need a place … any outside activity that’s gonna be exercise, I believe, is much needed and skating and bicycling is just as important as the rest of [sports].”
The initiative is currently at the fundraising stage, and the skatepark has been quoted as being a quarter million dollar project.
A GoFundMe is currently set up for donations. As of Nov. 28, $60 has been donated.
In addition to donating, some opportunities in the future will come up for students and community members to be involved in the initiative, Perkins said.
Tim Garza, founder of Indiana Creatives, gave the initiative a logo and website to help get the word out.
The Muncie Skatepark Initiative has had two events at Be Here Now, and Garza has teamed up with other community members who are behind the idea. Garza has also been mentored by the Mayor Gabriel Greer of Peru, Indiana, who had a skatepark built in his town. Peru’s mayor will attend a meeting with Mayor Dennis Tyler Dec. 8.
Garza hopes to have programs at the skatepark to teach kids and adults how to skate, as well as potentially holding skateboard competitions at the park.
“I want really just to help the kids, man. A lot of it is there’s a big heroin thing going on, just hard drugs and they need somewhere they can just go and focus their energy on,” Garza said. “It helps build social skills … kinda give the kids a direction.”
Todd Swackhamer, a lifelong Muncie resident and skateboarder, has had the idea of building a skatepark for awhile and is excited for the possibility of a skatepark being built.
“Some people coach little league, I wanna be a part of a skatepark in the community,” Swackhamer said. “We have the blessing of the mayor, blessing of the parks department [so now we’re] trying to raise money and find a good home for it.”
Locations are still being looked at, but the park must be built on city-owned land to take away any liability from the city.
Perkins said he thinks the skatepark will be built and imagines the building process will take around three to four months. He thinks having it built next summer is an achievable goal.
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