Town council moved to make the development of a conceptual plan and design for the Golden Freeride Park a new business item at Tuesday’s town council meeting.
“This is a new business item, so it’s difficult to get into any details at this point,” said Jordan Petrovics, manager of recreation services for the Town of Golden. “What I can say is that the Golden Skateboard Association is motivated and has been very proactive in their approach.”
The move means that the Golden Skateboard Association can begin the process to start applying for grant opportunities to further develop the park, with the first grant application deadline coming in early February.
The Golden Freeride Park is one of the busiest outdoor parks in the community, and is potentially one of the most diverse parks in the town. According to Wade Duchman, director of the association, grant opportunities would allow them to continue to develop the park and expand it, making it more safe and accessible to riders of all levels, from the advanced to the beginners.
“There’s a lot of ideas for what that whole area could be and we’re just trying to see if we could move things around and make it bigger,” said Duchman. “It’s something for our youth to utilize in a safe manner, and more beginners could use it too, there’s so many things that could benefit from this in that area for sure.”
The project begins with acquiring the funding, which would be used to do design and costing of the project, according to Duchman. This in turn would be presented to the town once more details are solidified.
The project will also help understand how the park is being used, according to Petrovics. There isn’t a lot of hard data to back up the fact that the park is one of the busiest in the community, and what is known about it is mostly anecdotal. Funding would allow for further research to be done to provide the data needed to back up these findings in order to help design a park that would benefit all.
“The first step is getting the greater community involved,” said Petrovics. “This group will be working on a plan to gather feedback from the community to shape our freeride park, and getting some data, numbers and concepts together to bring back to council for further discussion, which is the idea of this first project.”
The Skateboard Association acknowledges that this is more than just about skateboarding, as the space can be used by BMX bikers, scooters, or however people choose to ride, from toddlers to the elderly.
The park provides a space to allow the community to be active and enjoy the outdoors.
