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HOLDEN, Mass. — Beleaguered by recent challenges, the Skateboard Park Committee was at the brink of seeing their hopes splintered after almost two years of work when an unexpected spark of interest and potential source of funding from the community renewed their fire to get the park into the ground at Eagle Lake Park.
"I don't think we're ever going to give up because I know I wasn't going to," said Mike Savino, who stepped up to the role of committee chair after former chair John Blunt quit Monday afternoon. "But we need the support of the remaining members, and we need more people, and more kids involved."
The town's skateboarders have been left without a local park for a number of years, taking to storefronts and driveways on Main Street to practice their sport, often to the displeasure of business owners.
While a wooden skate park existed on one of Holden's tennis courts at Dawson Recreation, after being well utilized for four or five years, it was closed after Rutland opened a larger, unmonitored and free park that attracted skateboarders away from the smaller ramps that no longer presented a challenge. However, when the Rutland park was closed, the skaters were suddenly left without either park.
The skateboard park committee hoped to change that, and after over a year of discussing potential locations and ideas for the skate park, and interviewing potential designers in November, the committee finally selected Hardcore Skateparks to take on the project of creating a potentially 6,000 sq. foot or larger park at Eagle Lake Park.
Yet the process has been slowed by obstacles along the way, from opposition to the location at Eagle Lake, to struggles getting design input from Holden skateboarders, and most recently communication troubles with Hardcore's landscape architect Mark Leone.
"The principal designer that we were dealing with had been moved to the west coast, and we weren't notified," said Morano, who said that everything came to a standstill. "It kind of created bad blood for me. How high are we on their list of projects when they kind of dropped us without any notification?"
The committee also had the wind taken out of their sails in March when they first received news that finance committee recommended to not place the project on the upcoming town meeting warrant, and the vote would be pushed out for Fiscal Year 2013 due to money, on the recommendation of the finance committee and the Town Manager.
At the beginning of their meeting Tuesday, it seemed the final nail in the coffin was the perceived lack of support from the community.
Yet as discussion went on about how to go forward against the current, the arrival of Larry Greene and his young son Parker to the meeting changed the tides.
Greene, a member of Fellowship Church in Holden and former Holden resident (he now lives in Princeton) informed the committee of the church's hope to commit to the project some of the funds raised in the upcoming Thanksgiving Day Road Race, which will be under new leadership this year in an effort to continue the tradition and vital source of funds for the Wachusett Food Pantry.
"The more people who run in the Turkey Trot, the more money you guys will raise," said Greene, who said that, while the church is still working out logistics, a certain value of dollars would go to the food pantry, and "once we meet that goal, that remainder is going to go toward this project."
Furthermore, as a landscape architect, Greene offered his help and connections to help the committee along in the process of permitting, surveying and designing.
Greene's assistance was well-received by the committee that had been otherwise crestfallen.
"It's nice to have someone that really knows the steps and the processes to get this project done," said Savino. "We came from death if you ask me, today."
"That was a boost," said Denise Morano, director of Holden Recreation. "That he's willing to volunteer all that time and effort for this project is, wow, just extremely beneficial."
Though they have a renewed spirit to move forward and a re-organized committee, new members are still needed to help support the project, as well as vocal support from community members interested in seeing the park become a reality.
"We really need to get the residents of Holden, young and old, that have an interest in building a skatepark in the town at the meetings, and so we can start having events to raise the money," said Savino.
