The town’s skate park, plagued by vandals and escalating costs, will not re-open this year, town officials decided last week.
The Selectmen opted to shut the skate park down rather than spend the $2,600 needed in repairs.
All is not lost, as the state Department of Environmental Protection plans to rebuild the park at 3 Wakeley St.
The Wheel Park skate park will be destroyed when the state Department of Environmental Protection begins construction on a 29-mile bypass canal around the Tingue Dam on the Naugatuck River in the area.
Public Works Director Dennis Rozum said he will discuss a timeline for dismantling the park with his employees, but didn’t have any specifics about when the first ramps would come down. Dismantling the park will be less expensive than the repairs, he said.
Estimated repair costs included $1,900 for 10 sheets of special masonite board to repair divots, scrapings and other damage to ramps; about $200 for miscellaneous, wear-and-tear repairs to ramps; and about $600 to repair the four-foot chainlink fence around the park for the second time in as many years.
The 11-year-old park, with ramps and obstacles for rollerbladers and skateboarders, didn’t just fall into disrepair, Rozum said — it was pushed. Pushed by graffiti, garbage and destruction of the ramps. Pushed by vandals who tear down sections of a four-foot chain link fence each year and bring a picnic table into the center of the ramps so they can attempt to jump over it on their skateboards and rollerblades.
In addition to high costs of vandalism, the skate park’s disrepair has led fewer people to use it each year, Rozum said. While the park’s usage fees paid for the park staff and even brought in money for the town in the first years of its operation, the park’s costs topped $7,400 last year, while usage fees brought in just $2,400, First Selectman Paul Roy said Tuesday.
The new park, promised at part of the agreement with the DEP for the bypass, should open this fall, Roy said.