Even with community will behind it, building any new recreational facility in a small town faces a variety of obstacles, including raising the money, finding the location and developing the plans. Change inevitably brings out residents who ask questions about issues such as noise and safety, and providing answers can delay an effort still further — whether that was the intent or the questioner, or not. Throw in a pandemic on top of all that, and it’s easy to imagine that many who once dreamed of a skating installation in New Paltz may have given it up as a lost cause.
Kids grow up. Some move away. The desire to skate runs deep, though, and the momentum to build a better skating solution has been building for a long time.
Only about 20 years ago, police officers on campus would confiscate skateboards; now there are signs warning skaters that they must be courteous and safe if they don’t want trouble. Fifteen years ago, town youth director Jim Tinger took money from a McDonald’s grant and used it to purchase moveable skate ramps which were nestled in behind the youth center by the basketball hoop, to provide an option for kids who preferred ollies over alley-oops — or more destructive activities. Ten years ago some parents looked at the expanse of Hasbrouck Park, sure that there was space for skating without taking away from other forms of recreation. By five years ago village leaders were taking a serious interest in this idea, and after delays foreseen and unforeseen, on January 31, 2024 plans were presented to members of the public for feedback.
Presenting the ideas to a room packed with locals ranging from those with grey beards to those who have not yet known a razor’s edge was Eric Hennessey, who was there with other members of Hudson Valley Trailworks to explain what they’d come up with to meet the needs of skaters in New Paltz. While the crowd appeared to skew toward maleness — 75% or more skateboarders are male, according to a 2010 study, with the statistically average skater being a 14-year-old boy — there is a strong desire within and around the skating community to be welcoming and inclusive to those of all backgrounds and abilities. To that end, Hennessey revealed a design with features intended to minimize the possibility of skaters getting in one another’s way — or worse yet, colliding. While there’s been talk of managing a skating feature intensively, such as by scheduling times for the very young, Hennessey believes that the design itself has a role to play in minimizing issues by ensuring the skaters of various skill levels will naturally gravitate to different areas.
The precise location being considered is at the corner of Mohonk and Tricor avenues, which would necessitate relocating a large storage shed, two classic swing sets and an experimental hybrid oak tree sited by shade tree commissioners in 2019. That part of the park has a drop of several feet in elevation from the sidewalk, making it possible to build in ramps without disrupting the view of open space from that vantage point. The full dimensions of 100 by 120 feet will be proscribed by park drainage features farther up Tricor toward the basketball courts, and several mature trees farther up Mohonk toward the former playground site. Within that space, the design showed a variety of rails, ramps, bowls, as well as vertical walls and a pump track among and other features that can keep someone on wheels occupied for hours on end.
According to Hennessey, the entire area could be navigated as a single track during periods of low use, but the number of transitions from one area to the next were minimized to avoid the risks of collisions during busier times.
There was a lot of excitement about the design, and the adults in the room weren’t afraid to stand up and speak their mind about what could be improved. The main message the designer were given: less is more. The suggestions were largely about reducing the number of features, which would in turn give skaters more room to maneuver among them. There was a sense that street skating — tricks associated with flatter areas — is preferred over vertical skating these days, meaning that bowl and wall features could be reduced to support the suggested changes. Alexandra Wojcik would like to see at least one of the wider rails preserved, as it can be used with a variety of wheels, from those on boards to those on a wheelchair.
Allen Ross, a neighbor of the park and architect who does not expect to be skating personally, praised the design as “really beautiful” and for being low-profile and without fences to interfere with sight lines. “I’m anti-fences,” Ross said. This design is integrated well into the existing space, Ross said, contrasting it to an imagined “mass of material” if the proposal had included building up a concrete quarter-pipe.
One attendee suggested that planters along the Mohonk Avenue side could create a useful visual demarcation; skater Rafi Rogers concurred, imagining how an inattentive nighttime pedestrian might be surprised otherwise. On the subject of plants more generally, Hennessey said that while they can provide aesthetic benefits, there are downsides. Internal trees, for example, could provide shade but also tend to accumulate refuse around them — through no fault of their own. After the meeting, Rogers and some peers agreed that shaded rest areas would be quite welcome.
Attendees were eager to transition to cost and finding the money. A design of this size is estimated to run $660,000, a price which could be reduced by donations of material, and equipment; there’s also a dedicated fund for donations to this project through the New Paltz Community Foundation. Mayor Tim Rogers takes pride in not ever having raised taxes, and made it clear that this project isn’t going to be what breaks that streak. Funding for other, similar projects in the region have had funding from a variety of sources, Wojcik said, including private donations and public and private grants.
The mayor did note that there could be a historically large number of apartments constructed in the village in the next year or two; this is relevant because the developers are likely to pay money for each unit into the village’s recreation fund in lieu of building recreational facilities themselves. Rogers said that $2,500 to $3,000 per unit could start flowing into the recreation fund as early as this summer. The largest project now under review, New Paltz Apartments, has about 250 units in discussion at this point. If that number is not reduced, and Rogers’ estimate is accurate, that could mean at least $625,000 — but that’s a lot of ifs.
Projects like this “take longer and cost more than anyone can possibly imagine,” Rogers said soon after taking office nearly a decade ago. College students have started and completed their education just in the time that this skating facility has been discussed publicly. It might seem even longer for Rafi Rogers and the other middle- and high-schoolers who were in attendance; the talk has been ongoing for a nearly a third of their lives. Nevertheless, their eyes shone as they voiced their own feedback as everything was winding down.
“It looks great,” said Cooper Deney-Bhagat, who was eyeing the ramps with keen interest. Bruno Difrancesco praised the variety of challenges proposed, including flat areas that are the lifeblood of the street skater. Luke Feeney, whose preferred wheels are on a BMX bike, made it clear that this project can’t be completed too soon. If their voices are any indication, this feature will get a lot of traffic when school’s not in session.
According to Wojcik, who as deputy mayor has been a champion of this idea since at least 2019, it’s “closer than it might feel.” Wojcik also manages a channel on the Slack platform for this project, which can be accessed at this link: https://join.slack.com/t/newpaltzskatepark/shared_invite/zt-fy8bq40w-_oXyaQwOzdV7WsQyDT28rQ (or reach out to Wojcik through the village website to get the link by email).
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