St. Chad’s/Waterloo headland skate park update

I was asked by regular reader and keen rollerblader Jamesh to look into the specifics of the forthcoming developments on the St. Chad’s and Waterloo headlands, in particular the skate park on the Waterloo side.

He had bad experiences at Stanley Park due to wood being used for the ramps and rotting away, and found that the Lytham Park View skate park just wasn’t very good. Upon hearing about this new park, he was excited by was stuck for information about it. He basically wanted to know whether it would be as good as Ramp City on Cropper Road. Well, dear readers, here is the real deal.

Last week I contacted the Director of Development at ReBlackpool, Reg Haslam, for the lowdown and his response blasted into my mailbox earlier today.

I was concerned about the cost of the project. It had been touted in all the press releases as being a £4.6million skate park, which seemed rather a lot to me. A quick Google revealed that your bog standard concrete skate park would cost in the region of £250,000. So I asked Reg about this. He confirmed that the £4.6m cost was for all works involved in the development of St. Chad’s and Waterloo headland, and that the skate park section on its own was likely to be more in the region of what I had suggested.

Reg went on to give a detailed summary of the different aspects of the project;

The Waterloo Headland will accommodate the skate park, an adventure play area and a café building which will provide road bikes for hire. The building will also include public toilets, storage space and administration offices for the Council Leisure services team which will look after the headlands. We have also included an office space and will encourage a private individual(s) to set up business providing skate board, BMX bike and kite surfing lessons. The Council will also look to run holiday play schemes from this location. The St Chad’s headland has been designed to accommodate kite surfers, competitive kite surfing events and beach sports on dry sand areas.

A question raised to me was whether the skate park was being designed by a specialist skate park architect or council desk jockeys. Mr Haslam revealed that the architects being used is Robert Dye Associates, based in London. This company employs well known specialist skate park designer and skateboarder Jeremy Donaldson;

Jeremy is currently working on other skate park commissions in England and has developed close working relationships with specialist contractors. The design is moving into the detailed construction drawing stage and Jeremy is, I know, this week, seeking to connect with local skate boarders through Ramp City.

So if you want to help sculpt the skate park on the promenade, you need to get down to Ramp City this week!

Reg continued with a brief mention of the accessibility and goal of the park;

The skate park has been designed to accommodate learner and advanced skate boarders in different areas. We have also provided space for spectator stands and it is our intention to promote Blackpool seafront as a venue for national/international competitive events.

Good news, then, and if this is their intention then the park quality will presumably be first class. I just hope that it is well maintained, because this cannot be said for other council leisure facilities.

The skate park is seen as complementary to the indoor, all year round facility at Ramp City because clearly the seafront environment can be rather harsh. Because of this, the skate park is to be fully concrete, and where metal is used it will be stainless steel.

The park will be protected from wind and wind blown sand by demountable screens but is clearly a fine weather facility designed to promote skateboarding and BMX freestyle riding by placing this exciting spectacle in a very public place.

Bring it on…