Lansing - After enduring a three-year struggle to bring skating to Lansing’s Ranney Park, construction on the city’s 20,382-square foot skate park begins today.
But the fight to bring a world class skating facility to the community will continue for at least another three months, said Pete Bosheff, president of the Lansing Area Skate, Bike and Recreation Foundation.
The $713,000 project is still in need of about $100,000, which led Bosheff and other area skaters to launch a three-month fund-raising blitz, “Project Skate: Help Us Build It.”
“Just because we have an account to cover the costs doesn’t mean we don’t have to pay it back,” Bosheff said. “People have given up a lot of time to see this project through and it’s that commitment that has gotten us here.”
Ranney Park is located on the border of Lansing and East Lansing near the Frandor Shopping Center, 300 Frandor Ave., making it accessible to skaters from both cities.
“The area is staked and we need one more bond and one more permit to begin,” said Murdock Jemerson, director of Lansing Parks and Recreation. “We’re really excited about the way things are going. Every time I go out there I feel very good about what we’re doing.”
The construction of the park itself is being handled by Team Pain, Inc., which is owned and operated by Tim Payne. The company, based out of Winter Springs, Fla., designs and builds skate parks across the country. Each member of the crew is a skater as well as a construction worker.
The amenities that will surround the park include water fountains, benches, landscaping and a parking lot, all of which are being handled by Landscape Architects & Planners, 809 Center St. in Lansing.
“We started on this project a few years ago, we’ve been with it since day one, and it’s nice to finally see the light at the end of the tunnel,” said Roger Fox, a designer with Landscape Architects & Planners.
Bosheff believes the lure of a skate park in the Midwest created by Team Pain, Inc. will help draw crowds into the area.
“Tim Payne is the skating world, and he’s in the highest demand of any skate park designer in the world,” he said. “We’re very fortunate to have him.”
The park should be completed by late November and is expected to accommodate about 100 skaters at a time.
“We want to hurry up and get going, so they’ll have just enough time to get done before the snow flies,” Jemerson said.
The park will not officially open until late April, but when it does, it will be free to the public, a point that makes Bosheff proud.
“This is going to be huge and put this part of the country on the map of the skating world,” Bosheff said.
