Reasons include that skateboarding is not a mainstream sport

There is no lack of enthusiasm for a skate park in Ocala. There is a lack of money, though.

The Ocala City Council three years ago approved plans for the city’s first skate facility and requested that staff move forward with designs and threw in $200,000 towards the $600,000 project to get it started.

Three public meetings for the project and skate park designs drew plenty of support last year, attracting as many as 200 people to the events.

Fundraising started in February 2016 and was supposed to take less a year, with hopes that state grants and big money donors would generate most of the funds needed.

Instead, the city’s recreation and parks department isn’t much better off than it was a year ago.

Other than the $200,000 committed by the city council, Ocala Assistant Manager Ken Whitehead said the city hasn’t raised any additional money.

For now, the city’s hopes rest with a state grant application Whitehead hopes will kick start the project if it comes through. He will hear in a few months if the project will get the funding.

“We (ranked) 38 out of 100 but we don’t know if it’s high enough to be awarded any money,” Whitehead said.

Whitehead would like to see the remaining $400,000 that is needed come from equal parts grants and corporate gifts, public donations, and city and county donations.

“If we could get the grant money it, could jump start a few other individuals or organizations to give money,” Whitehead said.

The fundraising problem is rooted in the fact that skateboarding is not an organized sport that has a built-in support group of parents and potential donors.

“I am learning that, unlike Little League baseball or Pop Warner football, there are fewer organizations that tend to generate money. Skate parks typically don’t have as many organized events,” Whitehead said.

And while parents and grandparents of children who play baseball and football might organize to raise money for their children’s sport, skateboarding is another story, he said.

“They (parents and grandparents) also grew up playing football and baseball, they didn’t grow up skateboarding,” he said.

Without sufficient grants and public donations, “it certainly will delay when we can begin construction,” Whitehead said.

Asked whether a lack of enough money could cause the city to scrap the project, Whitehead replied “that’s a council decision. We hope it doesn’t get to that point.”

Along the way, the location for the proposed skate park changed, Whitehead said.

The park originally was planned for Scott Springs Park, just off Southwest 19th Avenue Road (Easy Street) near Wal-Mart. As that is close to Paddock Mall and the Hollywood 16 movie theater, city staff envisioned the skate facility as a central location that could give skateboarders other potential destinations.

The new proposed location is in Tuscawilla Park on Sanchez Avenue.

Whitehead said city staff decided to change to Tuscawilla Park as part of the city’s midtown master plan to revitalize the area north of downtown Ocala.

“It (the skate park) will draw people to Tuscawilla Park and it will draw people to midtown and it has a synergistic effect,” Whitehead said.

In February 2016, Kathy Crile, Ocala’s recreation and parks director, laid out for the Star-Banner her plan to raise money and said that fundraising would have its challenges.

“And we’re not going to fund this through bake sales and car washes,” Crile said then.

The goal was to raise the needed money in less than a year. Crile said state grants were likely going to be the biggest source of money for the project, she said.

But it’s also important that the community have a commitment to the project, she said.

Crile was not available for this story.

Cities with the most skateboard parks are in California, with between 2.5 and 3.1 skateboard parks per 100,000 residents. The closest skateboard park to Ocala is in Gainesville, which has three. The largest is Possum Creek.

Dwright Jackson, Gainesville’s facilities supervisor, said the Possum Creek Skate Park has dozens of people of all ages using it on any given day.

“The park is packed,” Jackson said. “For a sport that’s not organized, the popularity is there.”

The skateboard parks are so popular and regularly used the city could easily accommodate a fourth, he said.

Jackson said he is not surprised that the city of Ocala hasn’t been able to raise money for its park.

“I think it’s farfetched,” he said of any hope to raise the needed money by fundraising.

These kinds of parks need recreation and parks’ tax money to fund them, he said.

Fundraising to build a skate park puts an undue burden on the parents and children who skateboard, he noted.

Zumiez is a retail chain that offers clothing brands focused on sports such as skateboarding. The company has more than 500 stores. One is in the Paddock Mall. The store sells shoes, clothing and skateboards.

Store manager Thomas Sedlak also said it will be difficult to raise money for a local skate park. Many people still think of skate boarders as destroying public and private property when they ride their boards on sidewalk curbs, benches and handrails, he said.

“There’s a lot of negativity toward that term,” Sedlak said.

The sport is viewed by many as a “destructive kind of thing” and “no skateboarding” signs are still prevalent. But skateboarding “is a passion people get,” he said.

In 2014, there were 6.4 million people who regularly skateboarded. Another marketing firm pegs the number closer to 11 million.

What is agreed upon is that the sport is nearly a $5 billion annual business, with professional skateboards costing between $100-$250 and skateboarding shoes about $50. More than two-thirds of skateboard-related sales involve small specialty brands and shops rather than top brand names.

Helping to keep skateboarders spending is the fact that boards routinely break and have to be replaced.

Sedlak said that not being organized like other sports holds skateboarding back when it comes to raising money for parks, but the sport still attracts people from different ethnic groups and socioeconomic backgrounds.

The public should look at it as any other sport and financially support it, he said.

“People need to be open and accepting of it,” he said.

To learn more about the project, call 629-2489.

Reach Fred Hiers at fred.hiers@starbanner.com and 352-397-5914.