Polson Parks Superintendent Karen Sargeant announced that a $200,000 challenge donation has been committed to the facility by an anonymous donor.
"This challenge donation has made an 'if' into a 'when,' " she said.
Sargeant said she expects donations to start flowing to the nonprofit 7th Avenue Skateboard Association now that the challenge grant is in hand.
The 7th Avenue Skateboard Association already received some $25,000 in pledges and donations since it started last year. The sum includes a $250 check presented Monday by the Polson Area Chamber of Commerce for work the association did cleaning up after an Aug. 13 concert. A recent benefit concert by the Mission Mountain Wood Band also helped significantly.
A site for the park has been selected.
The park will be built on 12,000 square feet of city property along Seventh Street adjacent to existing softball fields on the west side of Polson. The property is vacant and now under the administration of the city Water and Sewer Department. But it will be dedicated as park property for the skateboard park, Sargeant said. The City Council will consider a resolution to that effect at its regular meeting next Monday, she said.
The skateboard park liability insurance will fall under the city's general liability policy.
Actually, skateboard parks are relatively low-risk facilities compared to swimming pools and waterfront parks, she said.
It actually will be a multi-use park, not just a skateboard park, she said. The park will be suitable for trick BMX bikes and in-line skating.
In a policy decision sure to be popular with skateboarders, "supervision and rules will be kept to a minimum," Sargeant said. She said excessive supervision, policing, rule-posting and nit-picking has been fatal at some skateboard parks.
"The less rules and regulations you have, the more you increase the chance of success," she said.
Posted signs will strongly recommend use of safety equipment - headgear and the like - and skateboarders and users skate at their own risk. Park hours will be the same as all other city parks, closing at 10 p.m.
Neither the city police nor Parks Department has the manpower to police skateboarders, Sargeant said.
"The only rules you should put on (the activity) are the ones you can enforce," she said.
In fact, peer policing has been very effective for some 10 years in the Polson skateboard community.
Isaac Knudsen, who has been skateboarding for several years in the Polson area and is active in an informal, ad hoc group of local skateboarders, said that for nine consecutive years - until last summer - the local skateboard community built, maintained and policed its own skateboard park on an unused concrete slab on Montana Rail Link property in Polson and held an annual skateboard "jam" at the park that attracted some 300 skateboard enthusiasts from all over Montana.
MRL cleared the property last summer in preparation for sale of the land, which is no longer used for railway traffic. That left the skateboarders without a place to ply their sport and has contributed to some recent conflicts as skateboarders spread out on public walkways, stairs, parking lots and railings elsewhere in the community.
Knudsen said the new park will help resolve those community-use conflicts.
A design prototype has been worked up by Dreamland Skateboarding, an Oregon park-design firm.
Knudsen said the park will feature several "pools" - free-form depressions in the concrete - one "bowl" about 7 feet deep and even a cradle in which proficient skateboarders or trick-bikers can do head-over-heels flips safely. It will include stairs and a handrail for other acrobatic tricks.
Skateboarding is not a hula-hoop fad. It is here to stay as a youth-oriented recreation, competitive sport and sports industry, Sargeant said.
Skateboarding has grown to about 11 million participants in the United States since it evolved in California some 40 years ago as an outgrowth of surfing. The average age of participants is 14, and most skateboarders are male, according to the Sporting Goods Manufacturing Association, which tracks data through annual surveys.
Montana has five existing skateboarding parks, in Bozeman, Missoula, Kalispell, Libby and Great Falls, with another under development in Whitefish.
The Polson park will be bigger and better than any of these, Knudsen and Sargeant said.
All donations are tax-deductible through the 401-3-C status of the Lower Flathead Valley Community Foundation, P.O. Box 255, Ronan, MT 59864, which volunteered to be an umbrella administrator of the Skateboard Park Association's fundraising effort.
Tax-deductible donations earmarked for Polson skateboard park construction can be sent to the Community Foundation, with a notation on checks earmarking the check for skateboard park construction. Checks similarly written can also be delivered directly to Sargeant at Polson City Hall, 106 First St. E., Polson, MT 59860. She will deposit them in the association's account at a Polson bank, she said, and tender a receipt for the money.
Reporter John Stromnes can be reached at 1-800-366-7816 or at jstromnes@missoulian.com
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