With two out of three truckloads of half-pipe ramps already delivered, Raymond is on its way to building a skate park of its own.
Jordan Small Middle School teacher Barbara Harding Loux and a group of students have led the push for the skate park and will be holding fund raisers in the new year.
The location of the park has not been chosen yet.
The students and Harding Loux will go before the selectmen at the Jan. 2 meeting.
Town Manager Don Willard said he was first approached by a group of students who wanted a skate park two years ago. Willard said he was interested but the students failed to follow up on the idea.
The idea seemed dead until this fall when a set of surplus ramps and sloped surfaces for a skate park were given away in a lottery from the town of Camden, Willard said. The half pipe and jumps, valued at $50,000 and made from plywood and steel, are being trucked to Raymond by Public Works Director Nathan White in three trips.
White said the plywood surfaces of the ramps will need to be replaced because they are too weathered. The ramps had been in storage in Belfast for several years before they were donated to Camden by the MBNA bank and credit card company. Camden already has a skate park and did not have room for all of the ramps donated by MBNA so the town decided to give the extra away in a lottery to interested towns.
Willard said another town won the original lottery, but passed on the ramps. Raymond won the second drawing.
White, who will be putting the ramps together when the park is built, said more than half of the town of Raymond’s public works equipment is from state surplus.
Marcia Roberts of the Teen Center in Camden, the youth center that runs the skate park, called skateboarding “a very humbling sport.”
Skateboarding encourages physical fitness, said Roberts. She said that strength, agility and endurance are required, as well as positive behavior.
“The culture is like no other,” said Roberts, who has worked with kids for 28 years. She said skateboarders encourage and learn from each other. Skate parks help improve juvenile behavior, said Roberts.
“If a kid’s in a skate park for four hours, they’re not downtown smoking a cigarette,” said Roberts.
Skatepark1: Public Works Director Nathan White stands near the ramps of the future Raymond skate park. White said the weather-beaten plywood boards will be replaced.
Skatepark2: Public Works Director Nathan White (left) and Town Manager Don Willard stand near the ramps of the future Raymond skate park. White said the weatherbeaten plywood boards will be replaced.
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