Progress for Memphis Parks and Recreation Skate park project

Memphis Parks allocated $440K for a skate park for their budget this year. Well, the budget City Council committee gave them the green light for this request.

Th general City Council that meets in early June has to officially pass the budget so there is still this hurdle to jump over.

After that we have to hope that the skate park budgeted money does not get shifted to another Parks project that has a higher or more urgent priority. This can and does happen. For example if a critical road repair must be done and was not expected, then the money can be used for that since it's more essential to the community.

Location Location Location!!
We are pretty certain that the skate park will be in the Midtown area but Parks has not chosen a site. Midtown became the area of choice since our survey showed that 65% of our skaters (out of 99 surveyed) wanted the skate park in the downtown or Midtown area.

From previous blogs we had individuals write in and suggest:
Binghampton Park
Tobey Park
Overton Park
Rozelle Park
Williamsen Park

Did we miss any??

We won't reveal our top pick because we don't want to bias a survey that we will be sending for establishing the best location.

Needless to say the best park should have these attributes:
1. Centrally located
2. Diverse number of uses - this promotes having more people around which means a park is safer and more fun to be around. Safety in numbers. It also guarantees that the skate park will be available for entertaining non-skaters.
3. Accessible to a diverse population.
4. Open space: The park should be highly visible to again promote safety and for allow others to watch the skaters perform.
5. Bathrooms.
6. Near a playground: This is good so that families of all ages can use the same space together.


If we have missed a park that you frequent please let us know.
If you want to take the survey that we will send out in the next few days please sign up for our newsletter.

With a very large population of skaters in Memphis, as we saw materialize at the Parks Skate park demo on April 24th, this Midtown skate park is just one of many projects that we are working on. Please be sure to check the other projects that we are working on because we will need your support to make any of these projects happen.

Cheers!!