Cape to make skateboard park

The city of Cape Girardeau is rolling ahead with plans to turn abandoned tennis courts into a skateboard park.

The two fenced, former tennis courts in mostly unused Missouri Park at Fountain Street and Park Drive will be converted through the addition of various ramps. The project is funded by a $15,000 donation from the Cape Girardeau Evening Optimists.

Part of the tennis courts' concrete pavement also will be used for roller hockey, parks and recreation department officials said.

Dan Muser, parks and recreation director, said the city hopes to have the ramps in place by this summer.

The city plans to buy steel-frame ramps that could be moved to a different location if ever warranted, Muser said.

Eager to try ramps

Dustin Cato, 12, can't wait to skate the city ramps. "I'll go there no matter what," said Cato as he and his friends skateboarded up and down a curved wooden ramp in front of his West End Boulevard home. "We can't skate anywhere else."

Parking lots generally are off limits. Signs say so. Business owners don't want the pavement damaged by skateboards.

Although Cato and his friends live only a few blocks from Franklin Elementary School, they can't legally skateboard there. Cape Girardeau schools prohibit skateboarding on their paved playgrounds, Cato said.

Parking lots, however, still get their share of skateboarders who ignore the signs until police run them off.

Nathan Nall, 11, said there are a dozen people in his Luce Street neighborhood who love to skate. "It's fun," said Nall as he clutched his skateboard, waiting his turn on the homemade ramp in front of Cato's home. "When you land a trick, you feel really proud of yourself."

Skateboarders can take to the city sidewalks, but it's not easy. "There are a lot of rocks and cracks on the sidewalks," he said.

Even a few ramps in Missouri Park will be a big improvement, the boys said.

City officials at one point had considered putting a skateboard park in Cherokee Park with the help of the Kiwanis Club. But Muser said it makes more sense to put it in Missouri Park where there's a concrete slab already in place.

Muser and his staff have been talking about creating a skateboard park for more than a year.

Local skateboarders and their supporters have voiced support for such a facility from time to time, but few have attended planning meetings with park staff.

"I think a lot of kids are interested," Muser said. But he said there isn't a skateboard organization around to push the project forward, as there are for team youth sports such as soccer, softball and baseball.

Depends on donations

The park won't be the huge affair that some cities have. Columbia, Mo., opened a 28,000-square-foot concrete skateboard playground in 1999.

Muser said the city of Cape Girardeau doesn't have tax money available for such a park project. "We haven't had any money for capital improvements for the last five or six years," he said.

The skateboard project, he said, depends entirely on private donations.

Muser hopes that Cape Girardeau's skateboard park will attract more private donations in the future so it can be expanded to include more ramps and rails.

The skate park will be designed for daytime use, so there are no plans right now to erect lights, he said.

Missouri Park, down the hill from Old Lorimier Cemetery, is off the beaten track for most Cape Girardeau residents. But Muser believes skateboarders will flock to it to have a chance to do gravity-defying jumps and twists on quality ramps.

"I will just be shocked if there isn't a fairly large number of kids down there trying to use it," he said.

The parks director said the skate park will help keep skateboarders off city streets and parking lots. But he said the primary purpose is simply to provide another form of recreation for residents.

Mark Kasten, president of the Evening Optimists, said it's worth the expense because Missouri Park will get a lot of use. The park, he said, currently is little more than a vacant lot.

Muser agreed. "There is really not much there other than open space," he said.

mbliss@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 123