MELFORT — Crowds of youth gathered in Melfort for the long-awaited opening of a new skate park.
“It gives the youth an opportunity to experience something that we didn’t have before,” said Rick Lang, Melfort’s mayor, at the grand opening on July 24.
The park is made to suit different skill levels, from new skateboarders to more experienced skateboarders.
This isn’t the first skate park in the community, but it is the first official one.
“Years ago we kind of had a makeshift skateboard park, but it was with wooden ramps,” Lang said. “The neighbor right across the road from where we live was the one who spearheaded it at the time, but it was wooden ramps and they were constantly needing upkeep and that kind of stuff. It was driven by youth at the time, so it did show there was a need for something like this.”
According to Devin Reiner, one skater who came out to the grand opening, there was that needed.
“I was born and raised here, I was patiently waiting for 10, 15 years,” said Reiner. “I’m 25 now, I was just a kid and all we had was a wooden skate park, and it didn’t get taken care of very well and there just wasn’t enough hype around – until they got a new skate park, and as you can see, it’s pretty booming.”
When Lang ran for council in 2003, he found a new skate park was what people asked for when he went door-to-door.
“It’s something that has always been on the back of my mind that was something that we needed, a real skateboard facility,” Lang said.
The skate park cost $720,000.
While this is the grand opening, the park itself was unofficially open for about a week. Lang counted about 40 to 70 youth there during a time he drove past.
“In Melfort we don’t do anything that’s average, and you might have noticed that. The [Northern Lights] Palace is a classic example. It’s a wave pool; one of the few wave pools in all of Western Canada. Kerry Vickar Centre is a superior facility, that’s a conference centre and a community centre that’s used for many, many different things,” Lang said. “So when we decided to build a skate park, you can build a flat skate park that’s just cement with some rails but we wanted more than that. We wanted something that’s premier for the Northeast and I think that’s what we got here.”
According to Lang, this is the first step to a larger recreational complex on the block. He does not believe usage will require a fee.
“It’s just the first step to developing the whole recreational complex out here. Next year, like [community services director] Ryan Danberg said, we’ll have soccer pitches in use. Two official size soccer pitches,” Lang said. “We’ll be building a spray park and an all-accessibility playground.”
Lang refused to get on a skateboard himself, saying that despite him being on a skateboard would impress people, it would impress the doctors who would look at him after the fact more.
