Teen Sports
Concrete ideas help youths get
off dangerous city streets.
By Ron Hyink
Most precast concrete manufacturers
design their own products, but very rarely do
teenagers design the products for them. Yet
that is exactly what happened in the development
of concrete skate parks at Scituate Concrete
Pipe in Scituate, Mass.
As kids are increasingly
spurned from municipal areas around the country
with their skateboards and in-line skates, a
group of local high school students came to
the precaster looking for some spare concrete
curbing on which to inflict their freestyle
talents. Richard and Bill Hoffman, who eventually
established Skate Parks Inc. as a branch of
their precast business, replied with a flat
no. “You don’t want these,”
the Hoffmans told them. “Go and draw up
some plans of what you want, and we’ll
build them for you.” It was a reflection
of the company’s motto: “If you
can draw it, we can build it.”
The Hoffmans sent the youths
away with some drafting paper to sketch up their
plans for a concrete skate park. But when they
came back, they were laden with cardboard cutouts,
clay models and other plans to illustrate the
things they wanted – things like spines,
half moons, pyramids, fun boxes and square rails.
It was a time when a local
DARE officer was spending too much of his voluntary
time maintaining the town’s wooden skate
park. “He couldn’t keep up with
the maintenance,” explained Bill. “The
thing would fall apart weekly, and the kids
would call him up asking him to fix it.”
Plus, being in the northern climes, all the
pieces had to be taken down and stored for the
winter, then set up again in the spring. Even
with devoted attention, the life expectancy
of a wooden skate park is perhaps two years.
Like most other towns, the budget for such intensive
care simply didn’t exist.
But constant maintenance,
which cost the town tens of thousands of dollars
a year, was not the worst of the problems. Screws
and nails would back out, and the plywood ramps
would splinter, making the wooden skate park
a safety hazard as well as a disaster waiting
to happen. In fact, there had been reports from
other wooden skate parks of screw heads and
slivers of plywood ripping into arms and legs.
And other towns across the country are facing
the same dilemma.
Steel is yet another option
for a building material, but it corrodes quickly
and its surface is griddle-hot under the summer
sun. Skate parks made of wood are noisy under
the tortuous assaults of skate wheels, and steel
is downright deafening. Both wooden and steel
skate parks cost about as much as concrete to
build.
“Concrete skate parks
last forever,” said Bill. That’s
why he named his product Forever Lasting Skate
Parks. The concrete sections can be precast
to exact tolerances in a controlled environment.
Hoffman had his forms built to within 1/16-inch
tolerances for those smooth transitions from
section to section, and he uses high-performance
concrete with fiber reinforcement that can tolerate
6,000 pounds of pressure per square inch. As
a bonus, the skateboard wheels pick up oils
from the asphalt on which the concrete pieces
are placed and help seal the concrete surfaces,
making the concrete even more durable.
Some parents raise the concern
that concrete is very hard and can cause injuries
during a fall. However, the plywood counterparts
are structurally reinforced underneath with
solid beams, so there’s really no give
during an impact. “It’s going to
hurt as much as a concrete surface,” said
Steve Berlo, sales manager at Skate Parks Inc.
City ordinances typically require the kids to
wear their safety gear when using the skate
parks, and even those who attend the school
of hard knocks soon find that helmets, knee
pads, elbow pads and gloves are essential for
preventing scrapes and bruises.
Still, the sport is not without
its risks – but they are acceptable risks
to those who participate. “These kids,
they bounce,” said Berlo. “They
fall, they get bruised and they say that’s
just a part of the sport.” He added that
there are fewer reported injuries at the skate
parks than at other unsupervised sports such
as baseball, football and soccer. And supervised
sports carry a bigger liability, as far as insurance
companies are concerned. Besides, wiping out
at a concrete skate park is much safer than
on a concrete sidewalk downtown among the traffic,
pedestrians and a nearly endless number of obstacles
in business and residential areas.
In case some of us haven’t
noticed, skateboarding and in-line skating have
become an immensely popular sport among youths
– and many of the kids are really talented.
Taking away their sport from the city streets
without providing an alternative is practically
the same as taking away their sport altogether.
Because of the liability, maintenance costs
and the fears on the part of residents, many
cities are reluctant to build skate parks at
all.
However, the teenagers are
getting involved with the politics of getting
something they want and need. In the case of
Scituate – and similarly in a growing
number of other towns – half the skate
park committee consists of skaters aged 12 to
16. “Those are the people who have the
most input on the skate park, because the selectmen
may be our age – and what do we know about
skateboarding?” said Bill. When city councils
decide on a concrete skate park and ask which
layout or ramps they should get, the Hoffmans
always point to the kids. “These are the
users – ask them.”
Project
Profile
Designer,
Installer and Precaster: Skate
Parks Inc., Scituate, Mass., a division of Scituate
Concrete Pipe *
* Scituate
Concrete Pipe is a certified plant under NPCA’s
Quality Assurance/Plant Certification program.
Back
to top
