Skate park to remain closed

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When a local resident came to the Village Board to complain about teen bicyclists damaging grassy areas along the rail trail, he also posed another question to Mayor Brian LaRose.

“Do you know when the skate park will be open again?” Water Street resident Michael Norton asked, knowing that such a reopening would allow skateboarders and bicyclists a place to go.

At the time, LaRose said that as far as he knew, the skatepark’s reopening hinged on construction at the Granville Little League complex, and Town Supervisor Matt Hicks said that he thought the same thing.

The bad news is that the park will not be open this summer at all, because that construction is well behind its planned completion, because of the serious damage the complex took from flooding caused by Tropical Storm Irene.

“We are constantly working on it,” Mark Teller, a member of the league’s board of directors said Monday. “We hope to have it finished this year so we can start using the field next year.” The league needs to expand and is adding a field, but repairing the flood damage has taken priority.

Hicks said it was his understanding that once the league’s work was done, all groups involved will discuss where the skate park will go.

Norton would certainly like to see something happen sooner. He has concerns about the way youths are riding along the rail trail, specifically about them riding on the grassy – or supposed-to-be-grassy – sides of the trail. In at least one spot, the riders have built up a ramp at the side of the trail.

“We need to give these kids somewhere to go ride their bikes,” Norton said at the meeting. “I would like to see some resolution down the road.”

By all accounts the youths who are riding in the area have been polite most of the time, and some have even ridden to the police station to ask where they should go to ride. In fact, at times the riders have cleaned up the jumps they have constructed when they are done with them.