Savanna Cousino, 12, of Coconut Creek rides her skateboard April 27 at Tim Huxhold Skate Park in Boca Raton. The park is downtown on property slated for redevelopment. It has skateboarding, rollerblading spaces, and shuffleboard courts. Tim Stepien/The Coastal Star
By Mary Hladky
As Boca Raton officials move quickly to redevelop their 30-acre downtown government campus, the most vociferous and sustained objections to the massive project have come from users of the recreational facilities there that will be relocated to free up space for a new City Hall, Community Center, residential units, retail, an office building and a hotel.
Avid tennis players who use the 10-court Boca Raton Tennis Center were the first to speak out, demanding the city keep and enlarge the tennis center where it is, or at least relocate it nearby.
They now have been joined by users of Tim Huxhold Skate Park, which also faces banishment to a new location.
Skateboarders and their parents have shown up in force at meetings of the City Council and the Greater Boca Raton Beach and Park District, even though the district is not the agency responsible for the relocation decision.
“This is a passionate group,” District Commissioner Craig Ehrnst said at an April 7 meeting, adding that it would be a “shame” not to do something for them.
The next night, supporters spoke their minds to City Council members.
“There is a huge, passionate community that is going to lose a park when it closes for the new city development,” said Toni Fralliciardi, the mother of two skateboarders. “I really think investing in a place for them to call home is really important.
“We are one of the most underserved areas in the country per capita for skaters,” she said. “We need to build something state-of-the-art that brings people to Boca.”
“It is a beloved part of our city,” said Rachel Bennett, whose son has used the skate park since he was in kindergarten. “There is a whole community of skaters and they are going to miss that little park and deserve to have something bigger and better built.”
Supporters have come to realize that any effort to keep the park at its current location is doomed. So they have coalesced around the idea that this is an opportunity to get a new, better park, replacing one that opened in 1998 and is antiquated.
They have a long list of reasons why it is important to keep skateboarding in Boca.
It’s an Olympic sport, debuting in the 2021 Tokyo Olympics. Better skate parks are being built in many Florida cities, and Boca should not be left behind. The sport supports mental and physical health. It teaches kids resiliency. Good skate parks have become destinations, and boost the local economy.
The city is working with the Beach and Park District to find new locations for the skate park, tennis center and ballfields.
They are jointly developing a conceptual recreation plan focusing on parks that have enough space for new amenities and are analyzing where downtown recreation facilities could fit in.
Nothing is final yet, but it is all but certain the softball fields would go to Sugar Sand Park, at Military Trail and Palmetto Park Road. A location for the tennis courts hasn’t been decided, but City Manager George Brown has promised that the city will replace all the 10 existing courts.
District commissioners unanimously agreed on April 7 that they want the skate park in North Park, the former Ocean Breeze golf course site north of Yamato Road, and that the city should help them pay for the project.
The city supports the North Park location, and the city and district are now discussing how the cost will be split.
Platform Group, which designs and builds skate parks, has told the district that the cost of one ranges from $3 million to $3.6 million, but the actual cost of a new Boca Raton skate park will depend on its final design, said Briann Harms, the district’s executive director.
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