Saskatoon councillors vote to explore potential indoor skate park

Bruce Tucker, Saskatoon Skateboard Museum and advocate for an indoor skate park. (Source: City of Saskatoon)

The city’s planning and development committee voted unanimously in favour of looking at options for a potential indoor skate park.

Local skateboarding advocate Bruce Tucker presented a petition of more than 200 signatures on Wednesday morning, saying their indoor skate park would also welcome BMX riders, roller bladers and others.

“I would just like to see an indoor space that my kids can go to, that everyone in the community can go to; go to a safe, functional place,” said Tucker.

“I want to see a finger board park, I want to have basketball courts,” he said.

In Tucker’s written pitch to councillors, he said with access to a building and under $10,000, his group could build a functional park for the community, and pay for the ongoing costs with admission fees.

“The wood and materials could cost as little as $2,000 to build,” he wrote. “We could build an amazing place, way better than Regina’s park for under $10,000.”

Tucker suggested insurance costs would not be prohibitive and said statistically skateboarding has fewer reported injuries than other sports such as soccer, baseball and hockey.

Volunteers from Right to Skate, a Saskatoon non-profit devoted to promoting skateboarding, could staff the proposed indoor park.

James McKnight, a member of Right to Skate, said that Saskatoon is a winter city, and skaters need somewhere to practice when the streets are full of snow.

He pointed to the model in Regina, where an indoor skate park is made possible by the city, which gives the Regina Skateboard Coalition access to a vacant city-owned building at low-cost to run the park as a non-profit.

“We believe that there’s opportunities that exist today in Saskatoon for an indoor space,” said McKight, either as a new development or through the lease of an existing space.

He pointed to the proposed east-side leisure centre to be developed with the YMCA and the currently vacant former bus barns as potential sites for an indoor park.

Tucker estimated an indoor skate park could serve up to 100 skaters per day, as interest in the sport has grown quickly in the last few years.

After hearing the presentation and grilling administrators on some of the potential options, councillors on the committee voted in favour of having administration report back with options for potential partnerships on an indoor skate park.

Administration will report back with options at a future date.