The Friends of Marple Memorial Park would like to upgrade and extend the Skate Park facilities in the park and have joined forces with Marple Civic Society, Marple Hall School and Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council to try and achieve this as part of the "Vision for Marple". We are also working with Lewis Abbott, who campaigned to get the existing facility built back in 2000 and is still a skater today.

So far we have surveyed and consulted with users and obtained quotations from Skate Park contractors for schemes ranging between £25k and £75. We've selected two of these to discuss further with users but the big challenge now is going to be finding the funding that will be needed to take this project forward. There is no guarantee of success and we will need community support to succeed.

The Challenge!

We still have some consultation work to do before deciding the best possible scheme for our park but the key challenge now is to raise enough money to get it done. We've established that it will cost around £25k to refurbish and improve the existing skate park and we have simpler schemes from the contractors featured below that would cost around £50k.

We would like to achieve the best possible upgrade to the Skate Park but whether it will cost £25k, £50k or £75k, these are significant sums of money that we do not yet have.

It's important that we do not raise expectations too high too soon and Skate Park Users excited by these schemes need to understand that it may take a long time to find the funds needed. But that's not going to stop us trying!

Tendered Schemes

Tenders were received in January 2012 from three Skate Park Contractors who submitted their proposals based on the Design Brief issued to them. Two of the tendered schemes, those provided by Acrete and Bendcrete featured below, have been selected for further consultation with Skate Park Users. Skater Lewis Abbott and Richard Booker (the council's Parks Development Officer) will start this process by going back into Marple Hall School and talking to the pupils who took part in the Enrichment Week activities last year. We also invite comments from all skate park users on our Facebook page set up in partnership with Lewis.

Click the images for larger versions of these designs.

Design Brief

A design brief was completed and put out to tender with a number of skate park contractors in November 2011. The design brief was developed by Parks Development Officer Richard Booker and local skater Lewis Abbott through their involvement in the consultation with park users and also Lewis's contact with the local skating community. The contractors submitted their proposals in line with the brief early in January 2012 and the plan is to select one of them to develop an agreed scheme after further consultation with skate park users. Here is a copy of the design brief.

Skate Park User Survey

Pupils from Marple Hall School developed a survey questionnaire about the skate park improvements during their Enrichment week from 4th to 8th July 2011. The survey was added to our web site to gather the views of other skate park users too.

We especially wanted to hear from older users who may have left school recently or even many years ago. It's important to us to collect the views of as many users of the skate park facilities as we can so that if we do manage to obtain funding to make improvements we know what the real users want. This information will also be useful to demonstrate that we have consulted with users when we make any grant applications.

The outcome of the survey can now be read here: Memorial Park Skate Park Survey.