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Rensselaer Students
Get Plans Rolling for a Community Skatepark
Rensselaer students in the Community
Planning Workshop class have joined forces with local
teens to develop a countywide, public skatepark.
To fulfill the class’ objective
to implement improvements to the neighborhoods surrounding
the university, Nelson asked her students to work on
design, site feasibility, marketing, fund raising/sponsorship,
amenities, programming, and safety plans for a skatepark
for area communities.
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The group effort began as a semester-long
assignment for the architecture course, which is taught
by Barbara Nelson ’80, project manager in campus planning
and facilities design and an adjunct faculty member in the
School of Architecture. To fulfill the class’ objective
to implement improvements to the neighborhoods surrounding
the university, Nelson asked her students to work on design,
site feasibility, marketing, fund raising/sponsorship, amenities,
programming, and safety plans for a skatepark for area communities.
A February Times Union article
about the Rensselaer County Skatepark Community Partnership
(RCSCP)—a group of interested middleschoolers and
their parents developing a skatepark independently of Rensselaer—provided
the perfect community collaborator. After agreeing to team
up, Nelson, her Community Planning Workshop students, and
the RCSCP held forums on April 8 and 15 for local skateboarders
to offer their ideas on the facility’s development.
At the meetings, Rensselaer students broke the teens into
groups and discussed their plans and ideas.
Partnering with the RCSCP, said Nelson,
has provided the project with a sustainable structure once
the semester ends. And it will enable the class to turn
over the final phases of the skatepark’s planning
to the actual users: local youth and communities.
“Hopefully, we’ll leave them
with something to capitalize on,” Nelson said, noting
that one student who is interested in continuing work on
the skatepark idea could be retained through the summer
with funds from a federal Housing and Urban Development
grant. “And a lot of people in the community who have
the ability to make this happen seem to be embracing it.”
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