EASTHAMPTON — The city may “kick-flip” its recreational offerings now that funding has been secured to design a skate park on Payson Avenue.
For nearly three years, a group of skateboarders have been working to carve out a space in the city to create a public skate park. Through fundraising efforts and assistance from City Planner Jeff Bagg, the City Council recently approved $42,500 in Community Preservation Act funds to create designs, establish cost estimates and hold meetings related to the proposed project.
“It’s super exciting,” said Angie Falkowski, organizer of the group, Easthampton Skatepark.
Falkowski learned to skateboard eight years ago in Agawam and was quickly hooked on the sport. At the time, she lived in Enfield, Connecticut, but because she’d established a large group of friends, she was constantly traveling over the border to Massachusetts to skateboard.
As a female skateboarder, she said she used to be intimidated by the male-dominated activity. Once she got more accustomed to the sport and gained confidence, she ended up leading women’s skateboarding clinics.
“It’s a lot of fun and super motivating,” she said. “Skateboarding is an empowering sport and makes you challenge yourself. Once you overcome your fears, you want to keep getting better and better at it. It’s very addicting.”
After she moved to Easthampton four years ago, Falkowski was still traveling to maintain her sport at a skate park. Finding time to skate after working her full-time job became more challenging with the distance. In 2019, one of Falkowski’s friends in the skateboarding community, Jeff Burke, a native of Westfield, had communicated with both her and her fiancé, Eddie Comini, about his work getting a new skate park in Quincy. Burke said he emailed Falkowski and encouraged her to get the ball rolling to do something similar in Easthampton.
From there, Falkowski organized an arts show at the Eastworks building and brought in local artists who are part of the skateboarding community in western Massachusetts.
“We got amazing public support for it — more so than we ever thought we would,” Burke said.
Shortly thereafter, the group of three became five with the addition of fellow area skateboarders Matthew Boucher and Noah Helpern-McManus.
In talking with Bagg, the group learned that the community had voiced a desire to create a skate park in the city’s open space and recreation plan. Though the city has a number of recreational opportunities with multiple soccer, baseball and basketball fields as well as tennis and pickleball courts, Bagg said there are not any other diverse recreational activities in Easthampton.
One of the biggest hurdles to overcome was trying to determine a location for the skate park, Burke said.
“There is such little open space in this town to actually put a skate park,” he said.
In the 1990s, the city had a prefabricated skate park built by Scituate Concrete Pipe Corp. behind Eastworks. At the time, Eastworks was a mostly vacant, dilapidated old mill building, Burke said. The site of the old skate park is now a playground.
The concrete contractor created a subsidiary called Skate Parks Inc. and built hundreds of skate parks for towns throughout New England. According to Burke, many of the parks the company created have been torn down. Easthampton ended up tearing down its park without any plans to construct a new one.
When the group had brought their ideas before the city, Comini said that Bagg, Mayor Nicole LaChapelle and At-Large City Councilor Owen Zaret assisted them in finding the space behind the city’s Municipal Building as a potential location at 32-50 Payson Ave. Comini is also looking into establishing Easthampton Skatepark as a nonprofit organization.
Since their first event, volunteers of the Easthampton Skatepark group have raised thousands of dollars to support their effort. In addition, city councilors unanimously approved the Community Preservation Committee’s recommendation to appropriate $42,500 in CPA funds for the creation of designs for a new skate park at a Jan. 19 meeting.
“I’m in favor of the project. I’ve had the opportunity to be involved in discussions around this and work and meet with the group, and I commend them for their drive and organization,” Zaret said.
At-Large Councilor Brad Riley and councilors Daniel Rist and Salem Derby also spoke in favor of the skate park’s potential.
“It sounds like a really solid business proposal,” Riley said. “They thought a lot about economic opportunity, safety and liability standards. I think it’s really great and I’m excited to see what they do with this location.”
Derby described the venture as a “long time coming.” He noted that when Millside Park was being renovated, there were plans to add a skate park. Financial constraints led to the skate park being cut and pushed to the side.
“It’s a great opportunity for the city and residents,” Derby said. “I’m happy this will move forward, hopefully.”
Now that the funds have been secured, Bagg said a designer should be selected by the end of this month. In October, proposals were sought for designs from five companies. The city also sought input from a consultant — with Planning Department funds as well as skate park donation funds — to determine the status of nearby Rubber Thread Pond to have a better understanding of future permitting work.
Bagg says it’s the group’s goal to have a designer visit the site in early March and hold at least two public design meetings in April and May.
“The deliverable will be a final skate park concept design and a cost estimate will make us eligible to pursue grant funds for final design and construction. We don’t know when that grant will happen, but we hope it might be ready by July 2022 to apply for those funds,” he said.
