Residents Push for Skate Park in Orangetown

The discussion of building a skate park in Orangetown is nothing new.

A large group of residents showed up at the Orangetown Town Board meeting this week hoping to push it higher on the agenda.

"Orangetown has made parks for sports such as football, baseball and soccer," said resident Mike Scully. "We eed a safe place designated for our skateboards,  bikes and roller blades. It can be frustrating for us to find a place to practice our sports.  We end up in the streets, which is unsafe for us, pedestrians and cars."

Eddie O'Dea, chairman of the Orangetown Substance Abuse Committee, also spoke out about the importance of creating a skate park.

"It’s an activity to give these kids something to do," O'Dea said. "It’s not a big, elaborate park that we need. The parks are here. We can add some ramps and rails to give these kids a place."

The Orangetown Board responded by asking Parks and Recreation Director Aric Gorton to look into what it would cost and what a good location would be for a skate park, or multiple parks, for discussion at the board's next meeting.

"We have done a lot of research how this has been done well and not so well in other communities," said Councilman Michael Maturo, the town board's liason to the Parks and Recreation Committee. "This is a growing sport. It’s an alternative sport with a lot of demand. I fully support this."

Gorton, who has been in the position for a little over two years, said that his predecessor looked into the possibility, but he isn't sure why nothing was done.

"I’m not sure what the barriers were in the past," Gorton said. "It could have been financial. It's been a serious conversation for the past year.

"My concerns in the past and still are is finding the right location for it. Anything you do, you want to build it the right way and you want to have the right location. You don’t want to have issues such as being too close to neighbors or in areas that are not appropriate."

Gorton said it is also important to get input from people who are knowledgable about skate parks. That will be part of the goal at the meeting of the Orangetown Parks and Recreation Development Advisory Committee next Wednesday. He said that many of the people who spoke up at Tuesday's meeting would be invited -- including Scully, O'Dea, Martin Dunn of Tappan, Sarah Anderson of Nyack and Vinny Raffa of Nanuet.

"We will have a core group of people who have really expressed an interest in having a skate park in town," Gorton said. "Hopefully, we can come up with something with their enthusiasm and knowledge base. I have not built a skate park yet in my time in parks and recreation. you can build them right and you can build them wrong."

That was a point Raffa raised Tuesday. He works with the Orangetown Police to set up skate night, for which a temporary skate park was put in in Veteran's Memorial Park. Raffa said he has seen parks built in the past that were not used because they were not built properly.

"You have to have a place kids want to go to," Raffa said. "You have to be organized.  You have events.

"It keeps kids out of trouble. I've been involved for over 25 years and I can tell you about that."

Dunn and Jim Castagna, who is on the Parks and Recreation Committee, raised the idea of putting in something temporary at first, but Gorton had concerns about that idea. For one thing, once a permanent location is found, people who liked the temporary one could be unhappy.

"I think you build it one time, the right way and at the right location," Gorton said.

It could also be multiple smaller parks at more than one location. Gorton added that Veteran's Memorial Park is not likely to work as a location simply because there are already so many things going on there.

As things stand now, many residents have to go to parks in New Jersey to find a proper place to skate.

"I go to Jersey to skate with my four-year-old," Dunn said. "It’s a segment of the population that needs to be reached out to. I don’t want to beat a dead horse, but how many soccer fields can you have before you throw a bone to these guys?"

"I got got 500 signatures from residents of Orangetown," Anderson said. "There are people and Nyack all over the place who are skateboarding and need a park. It's safer than playing basketball, baseball and other popular sports, especially with head injuries. It is reported to decrease crime."