Alas, as winter grips its icy hands around our state of Michigan, the snow shuts down the temporary Clemente Park for the year. The past year of skating with everyone and seeing the great amount of support we’ve had from both donors and skaters alike has been tremendous. Thanks to everyone that’s helped out thus far, and everyone who has got good use of what we currently have.

Though we may not be out skating the park right now, there’s behind the scene action happening all winter on grants and donor research. The closing of this year will mark the final decision on our builders: This is a big step in our process as our final decision will produce a 3D rendering and construction documents that we can use as a more accurate visual for everyone to see, especially possible donors and possible contributors to the construction process. We will break this park design into sections/ phases that will allow some of our large donors to “purchase” a part of the park as their own. Keep an eye open for a much more accurate and updated rendering of the park.

I want to take a moment to thank this past year’s large donors. Thanks to all the companies that funded us with great product for our June 20th event (they’re all listed in the Rosa Parks blog post), The Viviano Foundation (our largest donor this year), check out Tony’s son’s skate page here, and Baker Publishing Group. It’s people like this that help make this park come to fruition. Thank you.

Thanks to everyone that came out Sunday for our Clemente Halloween Bash. We held some contests, gave away some prizes, cooked some burger and dogs and held the first annual Martha Street hill bomb. Congrats to the Teddster for winning both the best trick and the game of skate (although both were essentially a tie with Seth Besteman) and congrats to Ben for winning the Martha Street race. He was one of two competitors who dared b-line it to the bottom unfazed (Keshava, you’re also a winner for simply surviving). We got a great amount of thanks for putting this together, and that lets me know the event was a success. One last fall time session with a big crew before the winter claims wreck to the rest of the park. We don’t expect to see the objects in the park last through next season, thus the plan is to: A.) have enough money to begin construction, or B.) begin placing a few cement objects in place until we can raise enough to begin actual construction. I’m aiming for plan B until the park funds are fully raised and here’s why:

Here is the debate with beginning construction early. Beginning with the street section when we have the money would seem logical because it is the cheapest section with the least amount of issues to overcome. It would be good to get something in place that people can ride, however the fear is that beginning construction early (without having the rest of the money to do the bowl section) will lead to people believing the park is done, thus stinting our ability to raise the remainder of the money for that element. It would be a shame to fall short on including great transitional elements such as the bowl/ snake run.

What it comes down to is that there’s lots of money to be raised yet, and we’ll do the best we can to make it between various grants we’ve applied for, private donors and interested organizations. Keep an eye on the blog because there’s more happenings to unveil this winter in that department.

Thanks again to everyone that came out this Halloween Shredtacular and thanks to Pat Harney for putting together the montage below that captured the event so well. Look forward to seeing you down at the park again, if not this year, then the next.

Clemente got a full segment on WYCE the other day. Really excited that they put us on the air so that we could get the word out there. Check out the full interview by visiting the Rapidian’s website. FYY: The Rapidian is looking for someone who would like to do Journalism on the skate scene in Grand Rapids. The best skate Journalist I can possibly think of is Premier shop owner Josh Higginson. Check the skate blog and I’ll think you’ll understand why he IS Grand Rapids skate journalism. That or our very own environmental specialist, Andy Weissenborn, the only dude I know to date that could write a poem on skateboarding: seriously rad writer.

In all honesty, can’t say as there’s much to report on, but it could be really interesting to hear some creative takes on what it is that goes down. Grand Rapids riders are a bunch of scrappers that just love to ride… keep on scrapping… skateparks are soon to come. Till next time: ride on, right on.

The Clemente Skatepark has been getting some good use. Alas, our ramps are slowly deteriorating as wood tends to do when exposed to the Michigan environment. We do not expect the ramps to last well through the winter, so we’re pushing our goal to get the full concrete park placed in next year.

As of now we’re hunting donors and applying for some grants that are out there and waiting for our contractor bids to come in so we have a solid price to work from. The full land survey is soon to come as well and will help us define a final design that we can stick to. As for now, the design is approximate to the final layout/ scale of all features.

Despite the decaying status of all the ramps that are in place, there’s people out there shredding it and making me glad we got that semi-park installed. It’s a public message that we are doing what needs to be done. Above is a montage compiled by Mr. Szudzik that shows what been going down at the park. Thanks for putting that together.

Yes it appears there’s much strife on the street between skaters and the cops handing out tickets. Tickets have become a serious nuisance to the skater community, climbing by over 1400% from last year to this year. The GRPD has handed out 42 tickets already this year, where last year only 3 occurred. To me, we have a serious issue here that needs to be solved. With no good alternative for terrain to ride it seems unfair to hand out an expensive ticket, especially in impoverished areas where it can be hard to afford an expensive indoor park, or even a ride to get outside of the illegal downtown areas.

Hopefully our skatepark can answer these problems we are currently facing. With tickets doubling every time a person is issued a skateboarding ticket (whether it be skating on objects, or as mode of transportation), and the chance of the skateboard itself being impounded, there is a lot of serious amount of tension building between enforcement and skaters. Yet another reason for a free outdoor park here in GR….

Checkout Wood TV’s story here.

That’s right. We have a plethora of obstacles all throughout the park and people have been out there riding everyday. There’s been so much positive feedback on what we’ve achieved so far, but there’s so much more to go before we’re done. The wood ramps out there are doubtful to last more than a year (especially once winter weathers it down a bit), and the size of the park doesn’t fit everyone all that comfortably, however I’m so glad to see everyone banding up out there in mass at the temporary park. Now the next step is to make this park legit.

Update on everything that’s been happening and our next steps to get concrete laid. We’ve put the skatepark out to bid to several construction teams, and we are waiting on replies for final pricing. Our hope is that we can get a local construction company to donate time and materials for all the simple flat construction work, and hire some professional skatepark builders to guide the complicated phases of the construction. With our 501c3 status (non profit) now fully approved, we are approaching donors and taking some grants that are helping us start the necessary steps of getting the land surveyed and park blueprints created.

We’ve had one very positive meeting with a skatepark building company that we are interested in using for the construction of the park that has shown great initiative on making it happen, and making it the best we can for whatever amount of money we can raise. The roughly projected estimate of final cost is $700,000. We’ve got a long way to go, but we’re well on the path to securing some large donations. Let’s make this thing happen. Businesses, individuals, parents, skaters: I’m calling out. Even a $5 donation from everyone would add up to a lot if everyone were to do it. Thanks for all the support thus far, I look forward to seeing you at our next fundraiser. Keep an eye and an ear open for a BBQ fundraiser at the park this fall. Later dudes.

Well, the word got out there way quicker than we expected. It’s true the city has allowed us to move the ramps from our Rosa Parks event down to Roberto Clemente Park so that we can have a free temporary band aid of a park for this year until we start delving into the actual park next year (tentatively). We are working on finishing up all the final pieces throughout this week. We are painting and laying some thick steel sheeting on to help those puppies last the year through this harsh Michigan environment. Watch out for wet paint throughout the next week.

Pictured here is Andy Poole, aka Camp Ramp Manager, buffing out any harsh edges on the bank to wall. Looking forward to seeing a mural there from the art crew that threw down at our Rosa Parks event (Ben Pozniak, George Eberhardt, Ryan Wiess, Scott Wygmans and Reuben Garcia). Much thanks again to everyone that’s been helping out along the way to make this happen. We actually have some semblance of a skatepark and it’s blowing me away. Awesome, thank you.

Thanks so much to everyone that came out to Rosa Parks Circle Sunday. The fundraiser was a great success. We raised nearly $2,000 not including our Maggie’s Kitchen profits (40% of their profits will be collected).

With the money we’ve raised, we were able to pay for our event overheads, put a bunch in the bank and took the $850 it takes to get our official 501c3 papers in process. With that, we can finally begin to apply for some huge grants that will make this skatepark a possibility. We hope to acquire the Tony Hawk Foundation Grant and a Dyrdek Foundation grant amongst other funding from some very prominent local establishments and donors. Things are really rolling in a positive direction with our project, and we’re getting some planning done on park construction next month. Look for some more information to be posted soon about that.

All the numbers and planning aside, the event was a huge success. We had well over a hundred skaters there throughout the day, and lots of watchers. Some great photographers/ videographers came out to shoot the event, including Tim Motley from Grand Rapids Social Diary, Kurt Westervelt, Evan Coleman (above photo is Evan’s) and Jai Yung. Much thanks go out to Jai for her help on shamelessly promoting this event and the project as a whole for us: she is truly a fantastic person, an amazing chef and an awesome event hostess. Book her for your next foodie party.

Lots of people walked away with some great toss out, raffle and competition prizes. The competition brought out some gnar and the following people won in the contests:

That’s right kiddies, camp ramp is coming along real nice. The garden is coming in and some vegetables will be be ready for harvesting in another couple weeks, but more importantly the ramps are looking stellar. Camp Ramp construction manager, and Premier shop bro, Andy Poole, is making some solid ramps and testing them for maximum 5-O grindage. Yep, it grinds.

As a sidenote, get signed up for the contest now. Better sooner than later because there will be a cut on how many people can get into the game of skate. Hope to see every skater in the surrounding area there on Sunday, June 20th: this public presence will help our large donors understand the serious need for the park at Roberto Clemente.