Tauranga City Council is co-designing a skate park for the city alongside a community design group. Video / Tauranga City Council
Tauranga's first "destination" skate park is to be built at Mount Maunganui.
Tauranga City Council said today it was co-designing a skate park for the city alongside a community design group, as well as upgrading existing skate facilities.
The new skatepark will be at the corner of Hull Rd and Maunganui Rd, opposite the New World supermarket.
The council said the site was chosen for its high-profile location, excellent passive surveillance (people can keep an eye out for each other) and proximity to a range of amenities including shops, toilets, Mount Maunganui beach and Blake Park.
Other factors included its location on existing cycleway and public transport routes.
The council's director of spaces and places, Paul Dunphy, said the Hull Rd site offered good opportunities for linking different skate zones together.
"We will be offering a range of street and bowl features at various levels and grades, including a competition flow bowl, both to allow for the progression of skating abilities but also to meet the requirements of the advanced and competitive skater.
Young skaters such as Vitor Kokemper, 11, from Mount Maunganui will soon be able to hone their skills at Tauranga's first destination skate park. Photo / Tauranga City Council
"We will also be working with mana whenua to incorporate the cultural history, insights and narratives of the area, as well as responding to the surf/skate culture, history and brand."
A number of safety improvements are being made to Maunganui Rd to make it safer and more attractive. Future plans include a new signalised crossing over Maunganui Rd at the Tweed St intersection.
Further signalised crossings and traffic calming improvements are proposed for Maunganui Rd from Hull Rd to Tui St, all of which will provide safe access to the skate park.
Dunphy said the skating industry had told the council more people had been taking up skateboarding in Tauranga since the addition of the sport to the Olympic programme.
"Having a world-class destination skate park in Tauranga will help aspiring Olympic skateboarders and attract skating events both domestically and internationally, providing a boost to our local tourism industry and economy."
The council is also upgrading existing skate facilities with further improvements to the Memorial Park skate park to be made in August.
"Working with the community design group and our skate designer, we've come up with some super fun street-skate obstacles such as a manual ledge, a pole jam, a glass-reinforced concrete (GRC) standard ledge and bank ledge, three different types of kerb grinders, and even a fire hydrant with GRC kicker," he said.
"We'll be reconfiguring the layout with some local skaters, so watch this space."
