A stretch of sunny weather has given skateboarders a chance to test out the newly finished skate park in Queen’s Park.
An official opening will take place in the spring, likely in late April or early May, but skateboarders of all ages have been trying out the newly completed skate park.
“Obviously, word of mouth has gotten out there,” said Dean Gibson, the city’s director of parks and recreation. “It is attracting a lot of attention right now, and I’m really glad the weather is cooperating so people can get out and start using it.”
The former Mercer skate park had to be demolished to make way for construction of a new high school, so the city consulted with the community about a new location and design, ultimately selecting a site on the former reservoir/tennis courts site that’s located across from Queen’s Park Stadium.
“We are really pleased that the skateboarding or the skate park community has been patient and worked with us over what has been a number of years to get us to this particular point, as we have gone through the design and finding another location for it,” Gibson said. “We think that the first comments that we have been receiving back from the users and the general public is that it’s immensely well received and getting check boxes on all of the important criteria that the skateboarding community was telling us was important to have in this particular facility.”
Gibson said he’s heard anecdotal reports that youngsters, teens and adult skateboarders have all been visiting the new skate park, which is great because it was important to the city that the facility serve a couple of different generations. He’s looking forward to seeing that part of the park become more animated than it had been in the past.
“Time will only tell what it looks for over the long period, but right now there is a new energy in that quadrant of the park tht didn’t exist previously. And quite frankly, I think there is a whole new group of members of our community who are coming out to Queen’s Park who didn’t before,” eh said. “We are hopeful that they will discover some of the other amazing features that exist in that park, whether it be sports or arts or petting farms or things like that.”
