It wasn’t as if people had stopped using Sandusky Skate Park.
“It (was) one of the most highly utilized parks in Sandusky,” says Arin Blair, the city’s chief planner. “I don’t think usage had gone down there.”
But while she says the park off Meigs Street downtown was used by people of all ages, families, locals and visitors and was a busy place after school and on the weekends, a need for change filled the air for the last several years.
“We started hearing from the community that it really needed to be redone and they’d like to see something new,” she says. “(It) was also reaching its end of life. The type of aggregate that was in it was starting to stink, and the whole park was ready for a refresh.”
After the July Fourth weekend, the park was closed and construction began on its replacement in the same space, Sandusky Wheels Park, which, as the name suggests, is designed to appeal to more than skaters.
After identifying a funding mechanism for the needed $1 million – the American Rescue Plan Act, aka ARPA – one of the first steps was to contract Cleveland-based firm
OHM Advisors, whose project-management and engineering expertise Blair touted.
“We needed someone that could study the drainage because (the park is) so close to the water and the water table, and that would be a big consideration,” she says.
They also brought in Los Angeles-based
Spohn Ranch, which specializes in skatepark design.
“We were looking towards, ‘What’s the best practice today and into the future? What are the trends?”
Just as important: input from those who would use the new park.
“We wanted to know, specifically, the types of features that our community wants to see,” Blair says.
That wasn’t a problem.
“(It) is one of the most engaged communities I’ve worked with – it was a delight,” says Blair, who previously had worked as a consultant for different municipalities. “Surveys that we would post – the next day we’d have 100 responses.”
Plus, she says, public meetings for the project were well-attended.
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Sandusky RecreationKyle Johnson helps a skater during a 2017 skate camp.“They graciously taught me the lingo and how to speak the language of this sort of planning and design,” she adds. “I’m a cyclist – I love my bicycle, but I'm not a stunt lady. So they taught me kind of how to speak their language, and it was a fun design process.”
And with Spohn, “we revealed a concept that was a great representation of what the community was asking us for.”
That was a park that still would satisfy skateboarders but also would appeal to the BMX riders in the area and others.
“Roller skating has gotten really popular over the last few years, so it really needed to work for all wheels,” she says. “There are adventure wheelchair riders that also will navigate these types of facilities.”
A design document from Spohn, provided by the city, boasts terms and phrases even those of us not into boarding know – such as “quarterpipe extension” – and others that, well, not so much – such as “radius wedge to slappy curb.”
If money grew on trees or floated in from the lake, it would be more elaborate than that final design, a rendering also provided from the city boasting a few features that are not being built into the park.
“The hardest thing about any planning design process is narrowing down the key features to keep it with a specific budget,” Blair says.
Still, at about the same footprint as the old park, roughly 12,000 square feet, the Sandusky Wheels Park should have much to offer, she says.
“All the features are built into it, and it’s really integrated,” she says. “There’s a flow to it, but there’s a lot of different ways you can interact with it.
“I think it will feel like a lot more park even though it's just marginally larger than the one that was there before.”
Regarding those budgetary realities, the city twice had to go out for a bid for a builder to fit within the budget, ultimately contracting Sandusky’s own Slip-in-Concrete.
The construction is on schedule to be completed before the year end, Blair says, but she also gives off an it-will-be-done-when-it’s-done vibe beyond that.
“I’d love for us to have a ribbon cutting and for folks to be able to use it yet this year before the winter,” she says, “but I don’t know the exact timing.”