Marble Falls: Local skaters craft wish list for new park

By CHRIS PORTER • Daily Tribune Staff

MARBLE FALLS - If you give a group of teenagers $50,000, you’ll hear some pretty wild ideas on how it’s spent.

Just ask skateboarder Doug King.

King, a Spicewood native, is owner of Rex Ramps, a skatepark design firm famous across Central Texas for its bowls, half-pipes, pyramids and rails.

Didn’t catch all that? Don’t worry. King says he’s happy to guide the uninitiated.

On Friday evening, however, King was the one taking orders - this time from two dozen or so members of the Highland Lakes Skatepark Association.

The group, let by president Donylle Green and grant writer Heath Frantzen, was recently awarded a $50,000 grant from the Texas Parks & Wildlife Department to help pay for a new skatepark near the current temporary park at the corner of Yett and Main streets. The group gathered at a local pizzeria Friday to discuss designs for the new park.

“This is part of the normal design process,” King said. “A lot of times, we’ll go to a spot in town where there’s a lot of people skating, and we’ll measure the spot and try to reproduce it in the new park.”

Skater Josh Johns used an artistic flair to sketch some of his ideas as friends called out suggestions.

“Put a ramp there. Make it eight feet long. No, nine feet,” Meritt Coughran said from over Johns’ shoulder.

Frantzen said the user input is integral to the design.

“It’s very much a ‘you ask for it, you get it’ kind of park,” he said. “We’re here to serve our customers.”

King said he has a few ideas already churning.

“I want to try and use the existing landscape, the contours and trees, in the new park,” he said. “We want to come up with a way to use the landscape as a basis for the walls, bowls and pipes.”

Green said ground could be broken on the new park as early as November, but money is still an issue, even with the state grant.

The new park will cost about $100,000, meaning there’s about $45,000 left to raise, Frantzen said.

“We’ve got three different private foundations that will round out the $45,000,” he said. “The foundations have set criteria as to who gets the money, but working with youth and at-risk youth and providing recreation is the kind of thing they’re looking for.”

The skaters have also lent a hand when it comes to fundraising - several volunteers manned face-painting booths at last year’s Walkway of Lights, and other fundraisers are planned.

Though it may take a while to come to fruition, skaters are already looking forward to the completed park.

Current plans call for builders to use the existing park - which occupies a portion of Falls Creek Park - as a foundation, and King said he’s planning on placing some obstacles atop the relatively flat expanse.

Builders will then pour concrete down the steep hill behind the current park, using the existing contour as a natural speed ramp.

The new park will consist entirely of concrete and metal - a far cry from the donated wooden obstacles in use at the temporary park.

And, designers hope to use material from local suppliers.

“That includes, granite, concrete and steel,” Frantzen said.

Several volunteer hours are needed each month to repair the wooden structures, he added.

“The new park will be very low maintenance,” Frantzen said. “We also want to leave as many trees as we can to give the skaters some shade.”

The park’s future wasn’t always this assured.

While applying for the grant this summer, Frantzen and Green ran into a snag: A proposed location for a new park near the city’s water treatment plant didn’t pass muster with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Apparently, federal officials got cold feet over the idea of allow skateboarders near the city’s water supply, Frantzen said.

The association leadership had to move fast to proposed a different location, this time near the temporary park.

Some residents - including members of the Marble Falls City Council - didn’t think to highly of that suggestion.

Councilwoman Olivia Cribbs, citing an encounter with a rude group of skaters in nearby Johnson Park during a weekend outing, originally promised to vote against the move.

Her concerns - that unruly skaters could harass passers-by and damage equipment - were echoed by other council members.

In the end, however, the council unanimously approved the location for the park, and Frantzen was quick to express the group’s gratitude.

“They’ve been fantastic,” he said. “They put up the land for the new park, and I really don’t think you could ask for more than that. They gave us a place to put a designated permanent park, and we thank them for that.”

By replicating some of the popular - and less than legal - skating hotspots around town, King said skaters can enjoy a specialized skating environment.

“We’ll have the skaters with us when we’re installing the rails, and they can tell us if they need to be higher or lower,” he said. “It’s very user-friendly.”

The skaters, for their part, are just hoping for a place to brag about to out-of-town boarders.

“We want to build a park that has its own signature and identity,” Frantzen said. “It’s going to be a feather in the cap of Marble Falls.”

chris@thepicayune.com

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Marble Falls: Local skaters craft
wish list for new park