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Home / New Zealand

Local Focus: Tauranga City Council hopes to create 'Olympic-quality' skatepark

Gavin Ogden
By Gavin Ogden
Video Journalist, Tauranga, NZH Local Focus·NZ Herald·
4 Nov, 2021 06:00 PM4 mins to read

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Tauranga City Council wants to hear from locals who love skateparks.

Tauranga City Council is asking residents what they want from a brand new "Olympic-quality" skatepark, planned to open in mid-2023.

"It's a pretty blank canvas at the moment," Peter Fraser, design lead for Tauranga City Council said.

"We've got a few locations on the shortlist that we're currently investigating and we'll work with the community on selecting the most appropriate one.

"We're looking at urban locations, so there's some in Tauranga CBD and the Mount as well."

The word on the street is Blake Park, which already has the country's largest vert ramp, and Mount Drury are current favourites to host the new park.

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"We do want it to be Olympic-quality if we can," Fraser said.

"That's what we're going in for and that's what we're hoping the community will come back and say, 'Give us an Olympic-worthy skatepark'.

"We would envision it to have a bowl and street skate-style area as well as a learners' area."

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A group made up of Tauranga's skate community is being formed by the council to guide the project.

"We're going to put all those people together and form a co-design group to help us.

"There'll be about 24 people from BMX, scooter and skateboarders. They'll be helping us in a class-like forum."

Locally-owned skate shops say interest is booming in the sport and a new park's design must cater to everyone.

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"With the Olympics and everything it's just taken off," Matt Sargent-Clarke, from The Good Room said.

"I think it's more diverse now, there's a lot more younger girls starting to skate and the guys and the girls all just hang out together and skate together from a younger age.

"I think if we have something that's more street-orientated, but also caters to everyone, that really will be the go - staying away from a lot of the bigger transitions and more focusing on the street park set-up."

"Surf skaters want waves," Shelly Jones, owner of Switch Stance Surf and Skate said.

"We want to pretend that we're actually riding a wave so the requirements we need are quite different to scooters and BMXers."

A common complaint is that current skateparks are too small.

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"Having a really small park compressed into one, where everyone's trying to do a lot of different styles just doesn't work and it's actually quite dangerous," Jones said.

For one parent, building a new park in a busy public location is a must.

"The Te Puke one - our local - we really like that one the best," Ngawaro resident Vicky Roberts said.

"I feel safe there because there's lots of things happening.

"There are cafes, the New World, people walking their dogs on the green.

"It feels like a safe zone because it's busy.

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"The 17th Avenue one I don't like so much because you go down past the Historic Village and it's in a cul-de-sac, dead end. It doesn't feel as safe."

Local skateboarding coach Sam Robertson said a good skatepark should challenge everyone.

"It wants to be accessible for all abilities," he said.

"That means young kids can learn to drop in or roll in but also there's going to be room for progression.

"Once they get to a certain level there are things to challenge them.

"That's what's lacking in the skateparks they have currently.

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"Either they're too hard to get started or they're at a level that you can't access them if you don't know how to do the basics like dropping in or pushing."

Tauranga City Council allocated about $820,000 for the project in its latest Long-term Plan.

The council is also planning smaller upgrades to existing parks.

"We're hoping to run the first of the three workshops for the co-design group before Christmas and then we'll have a first-round of concept design in 2022 and then we'll start construction in 2023," Fraser said.

"We'd hope we'll finish by mid-2023.

"We need to be constructing in the summer months for concrete to harden properly."

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• People have until November 28 to let the council know what they want in a new skatepark from by filling out the survey here.

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