EcoArt Intent- JimB
Skate Parks for UMaine
My idea is to build a skate park at the University of Maine that students who skate can go and use. It will include some ramps, rails, ledges, and some quarter/half pipes among other components. I think if more people skated on campus, it would be a lot easier for others to get to class on time and implementing a skate park would be the perfect way to get more people interested in skateboarding. It would also be very helpful for on campus students that love to skate, as it would mean they wouldn’t have to go off campus to find a nice park to skate at.
This would also be very helpful with improving efficiency for students in general. If there are more and more students skating around campus, not only will it be a time saver for students that would normally have to walk across campus, but at the same time, people off campus that live close enough by could skate to campus instead of drive, meaning less fossil fuels will be used on campus. A skate park on campus would be great, not only for recreation, but could be ecologically beneficial as well too.
Financial budget(with estimation of space needed):
A skate park is generally 15,000 square feet in size. After doing some research, I found that the cost of making a skate park is generally $40 per square foot, so it would probably cost $600,000 to build.
Budget(time):
After doing some research, I’ve come to learn that on average, it takes roughly half a year to make a moderately sized skate park. At the longest, some skate parks take 3 months to be designed, and afterwards it generally takes 2-3 months to build. So depending on how long it takes to design the park itself, it could take anywhere from 3 to 6 months to work on the park all together.
3 thoughts on “EcoArt Intent- JimB”
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Aside from encouraging students to skate to school rather than take their cars, is there any other way you could encourage environmental activism with this project? Maybe there are some design aspects you could implement (logos, posters and such) to promote your cause. Maybe you could encourage people who use your park to put branded stickers on their board? I also think you should flesh out the project plan a bit more. Look around campus. It’s pretty crowded. Where are some potential locations for the park? Who would you talk to to get permission to build it? Is there anyone who could help you fund this venture? With such a big project, there are tons of things to consider!
This is a really interesting concept. Personally I have not seen many skate parks around in this part of Maine and it would be great to see one again. I’m not a skater personally, I do not have the coordination enough for it. I can see how skating would be a more efficient for the ecosystem but how else could the skate park be friendly to the environment? Any possible way to renew or reuse materials?
Having skateboarded/longboarded for a decent portion of my life, I really would be excited by this image of everybody skating to get place to place – but the front end work (production of the park itself) would be incredibly difficult to offset if we’re relying on individuals to take the initiative to use skateboarding solely for transportation. The biggest problem is a skate-park is inherently utilized for practicing tricks and honing individual skills, not so much for getting people thinking about changing their transportation methods. I think this idea would be much more effective if it focused on restructuring current infrastructure on campus to better accommodate skateboarders and longboarders, as the current infrastructure doesn’t easily manage general pedestrians with skaters/bikers. Food for thought!