About 40 skateboarders came to pitch ideas and learn what's left to be done on the proposed $500,000 facility. They were pleased with what they saw.
"We make do with what we have," said Keenan Quan, who has been skating in Missoula for five years. "There's the courthouse, the college, places where we're not wanted that much. This will be public - not a place where you're being kicked off or chased away. Other people will come from other states just to skate here if you build this facility."
The action area has two main zones. Half looks like a long, wavy swimming pool, with pits and rounded corners and a cradle, or half-globe turned on its side so skaters can attempt 360-degree maneuvers.
The other half is a series of ledges and ramps that recall the low walls along the Missoula County Courthouse, the amphitheater at Caras Park and the terrace of the First Interstate Bank - all popular skating sites in downtown Missoula. At one end is a brick bank modeled after the humps between the University of Montana's Mansfield Library and University Center. Longtime Missoula skaters remember when those humps were partially covered in brick from the 1970s to the early '90s, making one of the city's first ideal rolling zones.
"It's cool to find a historically famous spot that we could re-create," said Matt Fluegge, the representative from Seattle's Grindline Skateparks Inc. that is designing Missoula's park. "I think a lot of the younger guys had heard about those UM banks - the word got passed down."
One of those older guys who remembered seeing a picture of himself in the Missoulian doing a move on one of the UM brick banks was Jeff Ament, bass player for Pearl Jam. His band has contributed $50,000 to help make Missoula's public skate park a reality.
"This may be 20 years too late for me, but I'll still ride it," said Ament, who was wearing a T-shirt with the logo of the Del Rey Marina Skatepark that closed in 1982. "This has some of the elements of my favorite parks. Grindline has built about 40 of them, and I've skated 30 of them. If this is what gets built, it's going to be pretty cool."
Although the design has no moving parts, Wednesday's audience went after its technical aspects like they were under the hood of their cousin's street racer. They wanted to know the drainage and how it would clear pools of water. They wanted to hear about the possibility of lights and what kind of hours would be allowed.
"Will the deep ends be in the shade for snow and ice buildup?" Adam Lundgren wanted to know. He liked the answer: The park is lined up east-west, so it gets a lot of sunlight and catches the prevailing breezes along the Clark Fork River. He also liked the cradle.
"It's like a cereal bowl tipped on its side," Lundgren said. "It's so big and so smooth and so fast. You can't do this on something made out of wood. Those require constant maintenance. This can sit out in the snow every winter and be fine."
The idea that something needed to be built crystallized in 2001, when a bunch of friends gathered materials and built a set of ramps and rails under the south end of the Higgins Avenue Bridge. Missoula Parks and Recreation Department Director Donna Gaukler said that site was soon ordered removed, but it proved to her the widespread interest in building some kind of public facility.
Then Pearl Jam returned for a Missoula show in 2003, and its Vitalogy Health Foundation made its donation. Skaters formed the Missoula Skatepark Association and teamed up with the Missoula Redevelopment Agency. Other city government offices got on board, and the project soon had about $225,000 raised. It must still come up with about $250,000 to complete the deal.
Page Orb was one of the very few women at Wednesday's meeting. She said it's difficult for girls to get into the sport, although more are picking it up all the time. She got started as a snowboarder and followed friends who liked the wheeled version.
"There's really not a great place for girls to learn to skate without being intimidated," Orb said. "The ramps at the YMCA are a good place to start, but they've got limited hours. Concrete parks are much easier to learn on. You'll see all levels of people on those."
The Missoula Skatepark Association has lots of ideas for raising its final dollars, from selling named bricks on the brick bank to hosting concerts and raffling cars. The goal is to be ready for groundbreaking this fall.
"It's been almost five years we've been working on this project," said association member Ross Peterson. "A lot of people see us as a bunch of skateboarders who are out wrecking property - why should they deserve a park? But they're starting to see we're trying to practice a sport and we need a place. Skateboarding is transportation for some people, like riding a bike. But it's also a way to manipulate your surroundings on your board. It's an artistic expression in the way one person moves around an obstacle and it's different from the way you do it. Sometimes that happens in shared spaces with pedestrians. This skate park is a great beginning to solving that problem."
Reporter Rob Chaney can be reached at 523-5382 or at rchaney@missoulian.com
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