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go
to minden, you'll find it. |
price:
unknown
terrain: steel and wood surface, quarterpipes,
transfer wall, sliders, roll-ins, wedges, stairs with handrail.
pads: unknown
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warped
sports-kearney, ne |
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http://www.kearneyhub.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=14978994&BRD=268&PAG=461&dept_id=551037&rfi=6
Minden tears down skate park; kids say city didn’t give them
chance
By AMY SCHWEITZER, Hub Staff Writer
08/04/2005
Hub photo by Amy Schweitzer
Skateboarders talk Wednesday as they watch bulldozers take out the
ramps that were part of the Minden Skate Park. Vandalism caused
the city to tear out the park.
MINDEN — Skateboarders in Minden will have to find somewhere
else to practice grinds, spins and other tricks.
Citing vandalism and disrepair, city crews used bulldozers to tear
down the skate park Tuesday.
“A lot of things compounded, led to it being dismantled,”
said City Administrator Brent Lewis. “There is a high rate
of vandalism in this area.”
Those who skateboarded there say the city didn’t tell them
the park was going to be torn down this week and didn’t give
anyone a chance to salvage any of the equipment.
Logan Aspegren, 16, of Minden said he and friends showed up Tuesday
as they do almost every day and were met with bulldozers and police
cars.
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“They didn’t give us any warning,” he said.
The skate park, in the Jaycee Park on the south side of town, was
built by teenagers about six years ago. Using donated money, the
youths constructed ramps, pipes and other equipment on a concrete
pad that used to be basketball and tennis courts.
The city supported the idea of giving the skateboarders somewhere
to go because of complaints from businesses that skaters were on
their property.
Lewis said the original group that built the park had graduated
from high school and left for college and a new group of skaters,
including Aspegren, had approached the recreation board about renovating
the skate park.
“I’ll grant you they were working on it, but it reached
a point where nothing was happening,” he said.
Aspegren said the group had removed broken ramps and were beginning
to make repairs. He said work had stopped for the winter, and the
group didn’t have materials to get started again.
“We were trying to redo it,” Aspegren said.
Aspegren said the city’s reasoning for taking out the ramps,
“didn’t make any sense because they also took out the
ramps that were brand new.”
Trevor Sinsel, 16, another skateboarder, said the park’s users
are angry that they weren’t told it was to be taken down and
weren’t allowed inside the fence to get any of the ramps.
“We found a perfectly good rail that they wouldn’t give
to us,” he said.
The city was having trouble with people who were climbing the fence
or removing the gate after it was padlocked to keep out everyone
except those who were doing the renovations, Lewis said.
“We’d had several problems with trash, vandalism, drugs
and alcohol,” Lewis said. It wasn’t necessarily those
skating at the park who did the vandalism.
Sinsel said the skaters stopped any vandalism they saw happening
and picked up trash around the area.
Lewis said the volunteers didn’t meet with the recreation board
when they were scheduled. The skateboarders said they were never
notified of the meeting times.
Kathy Aspegren, Logan’s mother, said she liked having somewhere
for her son to go.
“Not all kids are into school sports,” she said. Her son
became interested in skateboarding when he was about 9.She also
thought that the city should have given some warning.
“This is a small town. Everyone knows whose kids use the park
— it would have been a matter of a phone call,” Kathy
Aspegren said. “These kids have put their heart and soul into
that park.”
Lewis said the city had spend about $50,000 on
the park. It repoured concrete and provided the cost of the wood
and sheet metal to build the ramps and other equipment.
He said the original plan was to take out only damaged pieces but
the last time he was at the park he noticed that one of the newest
pieces of equipment, a half pipe, had the ends torn off.
Lewis said the area will probably go back to being a basketball
court or tennis court, which many of the youths said isn’t
needed.
“I don’t think they need another basketball court; there
are ones in town now that aren’t really used,” Aspegren
said.
“Even before, when it was a basketball court, kids would bring
down their own ramps.”
About 20 youths regularly used the park, and skaters from several
surrounding towns also came to the park.
Those who used to skateboard at the park said they will probably
go back downtown.
“That’s what they hate the most,” Logan Aspegren
said.
Sinsel added, “I don’t know why they wouldn’t want
us here, because they are going to get sick of us downtown.”
Lewis said skateboarding on private property is illegal, and the
skaters will have to either skate on public property, such as the
parks, or travel to Hastings, the next closest skate park. Kearney
is planning a skate park north of Meadowlark Golf Course.
Lewis said he believes many of the problems came from where the
skate park was located and that the city wasn’t able to control
access.
“The city fully supports the youths in this
community,” Lewis said. “The door isn’t closed to
them, but it is on this skate park.”
e-mail to:
amy.schweitzer@kearneyhub.com 
nate dogg. photo: gg allin
photo: gg allin
photo: gg allin
  
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