With a desire to give Cochrane youth and the local skateboard community a chance to reach new heights, a delegation by the owner of Shredz Shop, Sam Stuart, appeared before council last week to present the Cochrane Skatepark Strategy – a proposal to develop more child-friendly and smaller skateparks around town.
Cochrane’s Zero Gravity Skatepark was built in 2007 for approximately $360,000. According to Stuart, from dusk till dawn, it is one of the busiest parks in town.
“You can go there any time of day and there’s people there,” he told the committee.
The skatepark sees almost every demographic in the community and hosts events sponsored by international skateboarding brands, youth groups, the Indigenous youth program - Cousins Skateboarding, and the Prom Night Girls Club.
It is also home to ShredzFest, an annual skateboard competition by Shredz that is sanctioned by the Canadian Olympic Committee and garners attention from around the province.
“We just did it two weeks ago,” Stuart said. “We gave away $10,000 in cash and prizes, and we donated . . . $2,000 to the Cochrane Food Bank.”
Although Stuart said the he believes the skatepark is an amazing facility that was ahead of its time 16 years ago, it is now time to look into some upgrades
The local skate enthusiast noted that with some events garnering large crowds, the park regularly goes over capacity.
He added that it is also difficult for kids in some parts of the community to access the park, and that the park’s ramps and bowls are more geared toward intermediate and advanced skaters, which creates a barrier to entry for younger skaters.
The vision that Stuart has to drive skater growth in Cochrane is to start working towards a plan to have smaller, community-style skateparks in harder-to-reach communities like Sunset or Riversong that have entry-level obstacles for aspiring skateboarders in town.
“We would like for them to be kid-friendly skateparks, easy for beginners, easily accessible in those neighbourhoods, and would also ease some of the volume that we’re seeing at the downtown one,” Stuart said.
He added that with the old park, people occasionally complain about what goes on, but Stuart said that is due to the volume of people in the facility. Although there is no one who patrols the space, he said it is often well-regulated by the skater community.
“It’s like Lord of the Flies, there’s nobody to patrol it, it’s just kids controlling it themselves,” Stuart said. I’ve lived here for 16 years, I think I’ve [seen] two fights there, and I know like when stuff happens, it ends up on Cochrane Moms Facebook page. But I think it really is pretty well regulated by kids overall.”
To close his presentation, Stuart showed council an example of a skateboard facility that the community could benefit from. He added that he had a prior discussion with Mayor Jeff Genung about the topic.
“When I spoke to Jeff about this before, he seemed to think that, . . . some of the builders in the communities might be interested in building small [skate]parks in instead of a playground or something,” Stuart said.
Coun. Marni Fedeyko, kicked off questions by inquiring about a petition that occurred at one point that looked into expanding the current skatepark. Stuart confirmed there was something along those lines up for debate almost a decade ago, after discussing the possibility with the Town.
“It was always talk about expanding the current one, and that was always kind of the dream there, was to add a kid’s section onto it,” Stuart said. “And then COVID happened, and watching the amount of kids that were there . . . it was pretty eye-opening to most people that you don’t want more people jammed into that zone, so we kind of gave up, and I think we’re kind of re-strategizing on what to do.”
Although they don’t have a petition right now, Stuart said he has no doubt he could garner enough signatures if that would help their cause.
Fedeyko also suggested to Stuart that he should start reaching out to developers in the community to see if they would be interested in exploring the possibility of building the type of smaller skatepark he envisions.
“I think anyone with young kids who lives in Cochrane realizes how important this would be to expanding our recreation needs for youth,” Fedeyko said.
Coun. Morgan Nagel asked Stuart if the skater community would prefer smaller parks around town as opposed to a mega-park that would garner regional attention.
Although Stuart said it would be “sweet” to see that type of facility in Cochrane, he outlined it would also bring problems from having that many people in that space. He compared the possibility to Millennium Park in downtown Calgary and the negative reputation the 24-hour space gives to skateparks in general.
“Calgary has a really good skatepark strategy,” Stuart said. “They wanted to do 50 parks in 10 years, they failed at a lot of them, [but] they’re putting in like three or four skate parks a year right now, and a lot of the community parks have been huge successes.”
Nagel also asked about what additional features should be added for new skaters. Stuart said they would only be one or two simple obstacles that would not cost very much.
Stuart added his group has funds available for them, but are not organized enough to put it into action. He explained that it was received through a grant that was applied through a colleague that was unable to attend the presentation.
As part of his time as a council member, Mayor Genung said he recalled the day the Zero Gravity Skatepark first opened.
“It blew me away at that time how many people were at the opening,” Genung said. “…the whole community seemed to show up in droves that day, and again, what I’ve been touched by [on] your story is how many people that your activity reaches, and you outlined that very well in you presentation tonight.”
Genung said it was a great step for Stuart to reach out to council for this initiative, and encouraged him to invite council and administration to future events at the skatepark.
“Not that you need to convince us further, but I think when we see it and live it with you, and see what you’re up to there, I think we could better help find a way to get it done in the future,” Genung said.
A point raised by Coun. Alex Reed suggested that Stuart form a non-profit organization as doing so would help attract funds they would otherwise be unable to obtain.
