The long awaited Farnborough Skate Park officially opened on Saturday 30th November at 12.00pm. Members of Regiment 36, the local skate association involved in the design of the Skate Park, carried out the opening ceremony and provided a BMX and Skate board demonstration.

Cllr David Clifford, Cabinet Member for Leisure and Promotions, Cllr David Clifford, said: 'Regiment 36 have been on board with Rushmoor Borough Council from day one and have been involved in decisions regarding the location, design, content and building of the park. The result is a fantastic facility that is safe, fully accessible and a flagship for the borough."
Farnborough Skate Park is a new purpose built skate park situated next to Farnborough Recreation Centre, Westmead.

The project has taken nearly two years to complete from conception through to delivery and has been a very successful working partnership between Regiment 36 and Rushmoor Council.

Ian Munns of Regiment 36 says ‘ It has been a huge effort to get to this stage but the end result is well worth it. There has been a great deal of interest in the park already and we have been meeting and talking with skaters from as far away as Sunderland who have come to find out how we got the park.’

One of the aims of the project has been to raise the profile of wheel based sports and help young people develop their skills and achieve sports person status within their chosen discipline.

Simon Venn, Youth Project Officer at Rushmoor Borough Council, has been managing the project since February 2001 and said: ‘ This project is a great example of a local authority working with members of the community to successfully deliver a much needed, quality facility. For me personally it has been a very rewarding experience.’

Paul Blake, Developments officer of Regiment 36 officially opens Farnborough Skatepark

The park was funded by Rushmoor Council and a range of partners including Swivel Skate Shop, Hampshire Playing Fields Association and the Community Safety Partnership. The Sport England Lottery Fund met almost half of the costs, by granting a £92,000 award.

Paul Wheeler, Development Manager for Sport England, said ‘This is a great project that centres around the young local community and will encourage them to participate in their sporting activity in a safe and organised environment.'

The Skate Park is open 7 days a week and is an unsupervised open access park. It is floodlit until 10pm and has 24 CCTV monitoring. The ramps are designed to meet the needs of users of all abilities and include a small mini half-pipe, larger midi half pipe, volcano spine jump and a variety of flatbanks and quarters.
For further information contact (01252) 398 000.

Back

Any queries:
regimentthirtysix@hotmail.com