University considers parking lot by Pennsylvania Avenue Residence hall for skate park location
The crumbling blacktop and rusty basketball hoops outside of Pennsylvania Avenue Residence hall may get a punk transformation.
The Illinois Skateboarding Society has recently begun talks with Campus Recreation, regarding the possible construction of a skate park on campus. While the park could take up to two years to build, ISS president Kristopher Long said he is excited that students may eventually have a legal place to skate close to where they live.
"We feel like PAR basketball court is the best spot to have a location, the reason being because people don't use it that much as a basketball court and they're going to renovate it regardless," Long said.
Long and other members of the society composed and submitted a proposal to Campus Recreation last spring, asking to transform the spot into a skateboard haven. The proposal claimed that skateboarding was not included in the University's goals for an Inclusive Illinois, which aims to give resources to diverse groups in ethnicity, religion and hobbies, among other things.
Eric Rea, (check spelling and title tomorrow), said conversations will continue to take place among members of Campus Recreation, University officials, University housing and the skate society about the possibility of implementing a skate park. Because University Housing owns the property where the parking lot rests, Rea said housing officials would have to sign off on its renovation.
"There's places for people to play basketball on campus, tennis, swim, play soccer, you know all of those activities, but there isn't a place for skateboarders so if we're able to, I think it would be great to put in an area for them," Rea said.
Rea said the plans will need to become more finalized before they will have an idea of how much the park will cost and where the money to fund it will come from.
"We're glad it seems like it's moving forward. Up until this point we felt like there wasn't much interest, we didn't get much feedback and now we're starting to understand that it's going to be a long process," Long said.
Long said he hopes the new park would have iron ledges to do grinds, ramps, quarter pipes and small hand rails.
The Illinois Skateboarding Society has recently begun talks with Campus Recreation, regarding the possible construction of a skate park on campus. While the park could take up to two years to build, ISS president Kristopher Long said he is excited that students may eventually have a legal place to skate close to where they live.
"We feel like PAR basketball court is the best spot to have a location, the reason being because people don't use it that much as a basketball court and they're going to renovate it regardless," Long said.
Long and other members of the society composed and submitted a proposal to Campus Recreation last spring, asking to transform the spot into a skateboard haven. The proposal claimed that skateboarding was not included in the University's goals for an Inclusive Illinois, which aims to give resources to diverse groups in ethnicity, religion and hobbies, among other things.
Eric Rea, (check spelling and title tomorrow), said conversations will continue to take place among members of Campus Recreation, University officials, University housing and the skate society about the possibility of implementing a skate park. Because University Housing owns the property where the parking lot rests, Rea said housing officials would have to sign off on its renovation.
"There's places for people to play basketball on campus, tennis, swim, play soccer, you know all of those activities, but there isn't a place for skateboarders so if we're able to, I think it would be great to put in an area for them," Rea said.
Rea said the plans will need to become more finalized before they will have an idea of how much the park will cost and where the money to fund it will come from.
"We're glad it seems like it's moving forward. Up until this point we felt like there wasn't much interest, we didn't get much feedback and now we're starting to understand that it's going to be a long process," Long said.
Long said he hopes the new park would have iron ledges to do grinds, ramps, quarter pipes and small hand rails.