State College Skatepark Organizers Seeking Key Grant to Move Forward with Construction

Organizers of the long-running effort to build a free public skatepark in State College are seeking a grant that could be the tipping point to move forward with construction.

Gordon Kauffman, a volunteer leader of the Action Sports Park Committee, told Centre County commissioners on Tuesday that the borough will be applying for an Appalachian Regional Commission Area Development Grant for the High Point Skatepark. The proposed park will have 20,000-square-foot facility for wheeled sports like skateboarding, BMX, rollerskating and scootering to be located at the borough-owned High Point Park off of Whitehall Road.

Committee members earlier this year said they expected the grant application to seek about $700,000. With more than $1 million already raised for the estimated $1.9 million project, Kauffman said the grant could be what’s needed to OK construction.

“We believe that this grant could put us to a point where we can schedule the buildout of the park, which would be scheduled for the summer 2024,” Kauffman said.

The Board of Commissioners approved a letter of support for the grant application to ARC, an economic development partnership entity of the federal government and 13 state governments that in Pennsylvania works with the Department of Community and Economic Development.

Organizers are soliciting letters of support from both local governments, as well as local businesses that can speak to job creation and private investment in the community.

“So that’s our two-pronged approach since this grant focuses on job creation,” Kauffman said. “Even though it wasn’t designed to be a destination park, it’s really a community park, we see this park becoming a destination for the community and being a tremendous asset.”

The wheelchair-accessible facility will replace the unused baseball field at High Point Park, taking up about 3 acres of the 6-acre lot. It will be designed for all skill levels with amenities for park and street-style riding with ledges, stairs, rails, banks, a mini-ramp area, a brick volcano, quarterpipe, planting areas with boulders for seating spots and a center courtyard with a large granite pad.

The upper part of the design is a plaza-style park for skateboarders while the lower elevation has been refined to better support scooters and bikes. The surrounding area will be landscaped to be enjoyable for all, with or without wheels.

“There had been some discussion about perhaps doing this in phases, but we wanted to make sure that we build the very best park for all of those intended users,” Kauffman said. “Currently with the amount of money raised, which hopefully will include this grant award, we can build the park we’ve always wanted to build.”

State College earlier this week received a $12,500 tourism grant from the Happy Valley Adventure Bureau and the commissioners for construction of the skatepark.

Since 2020, when the initiative began in earnest, the project has received three state grants totaling $750,000 and a $200,000 commitment from the borough. It’s also been awarded $30,000 from Tony Hawk’s The Skatepark Project and $25,000 from the Hamer Foundation, while organizers have also raised more than $40,000 from private donations, online fundraising and community fundraising events.

While talk of a free and easily accessible public skatepark in State College dates back at least 25 years, the effort gained significant momentum in 2016 when a group of local parents and community members began working with the borough on a plan for what has been called an “action sports park.” In 2017, State College Borough Council voted to include the project in its Capital Improvement Plan and since then borough officials have worked to secure grants and determine a location, while volunteers led the charge on private fundraising and planning.

Jake Johnson, a professional skateboarder and State College native who opened IQ Skateshop on South Pugh Street in 2021, and his father, Tim, a professor emeritus of landscape architecture at Penn State, came on board in the last few years and helped develop the concept for the current design. They enlisted New Line Skateparks, which has led design and construction on more than 350 municipal projects, to develop final technical designs and construction plans, and a final plan was drafted last spring after numerous meetings were held with local youth and professional professional BMX riders and skateboarders, along with other community members.

New Line is expected to lead the construction of the park, which will take about three months to complete. Committee member Kim Faulds told borough council in March that it is imperative construction begin by the summer of 2024 because some of the grants will expire after that.

Board of Commissioners Chair Mark Higgins said on Tuesday that outdoor recreation facilities have gained significant momentum locally, citing most recently the grand opening for the Bike Park at Harvest Fields Community Trails in Boalsburg.

Vice Chair Amber Concepcion noted the skatepark will become part of an increasingly popular outdoor recreation scene in the county.

“We kind of are creating this ecosystem here,” she said. “Whether this park is a destination in and of itself, it’s part of an ecosystem of outdoor recreation here in Centre County that is just becoming really fruitful and really exciting.”

Though Tussey Mountain has had a skatepark for years, there currently are no free and easily accessible facilities of that kind in the State College area.

“This is going to be great and meaningful and I think it will be a game-changer,” Commissioner Steve Dershem said. “I think it’s something that our area could desperately use.”

The borough will continue to own the park, which will be maintained by Centre Region Parks and Recreation.

The committee is continuing to pursue donations for the project. To donate, visit highpointskatepark.com or crpr.org/high-point-skatepark.