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Skateboard park on the horizon for Redcliff

Jan 9, 2019 | 4:31 PM

 

Redcliff, AB – The Town of Redcliff will be getting a new piece of public infrastructure sometime in the near future.

Town Council has given the go-ahead to developers to start planning a roughly $215,000 skateboard park in Redcliff.

It will be a slow process, but one that begins next week with an open-house to see what residents have to say.

With the two main goals of the open-house, here’s Planning Specialist with the Town of Redcliff,  Jordan Zukowski.

“For the skateboard park portion of the open-house, we’re at the very beginning stages of this project,” said Zukowski. “Council gave direction that they wanted a skate board park in Redcliff and they allocated some money in the budget towards the new park.”

But before the Town does anything, they want to hear from the people who live there.

“We’re asking where the citizens of Redcliff would like a skateboard park to be located in Town and also what kinds of features and amenities they would like as well.”

Zukowski said because it will be a Town-operated facility, the most obvious location for a skate park would be on Town-owned property.

“We do have some vacant land on Main Street where we do have some Town facilities like the arena, library and pool. That area is mostly Town-owned and could be a possible spot for a skate park. But, we are hosting this open house because we want to ask the public about what their ideal location would be.”

In addition to the skateboard park, there will be another item discussed at the open house; the Municipal Development Plan (MDP), which is a lot further along.

“The MDP acts as the overall guiding document for how development will occur in Redcliff and it covers topics like where we’re going to grow in terms of residential, commercial and industrial areas. It also covers topics like parks and recreation and economic development as well.”

The MDP project has been under development for the last year and a half and a lot of the content comes from feedback provided by the residents of Redcliff.

“We’ve had a lot of public events in that year and a half to collect feedback on the draft plan. The open-house is now presenting that draft plan back to the public to kind of get their feedback on ‘this is what we heard from you, tell us what you think about how we put it all together’. “

And believe it or not, the idea of the skate park was born from this MDP draft.

“When we were doing the initial consultation for the MDP, we did a few workshops with grade six students at Margaret Wooding School here in Redcliff. We asked them about what they would like Redcliff to look like in the future and the number one thing from those grade six students at Margaret Wooding School was they wanted a skate board park.”

To finish the conversation, Zukowski had this to say:

“We’re hoping to have a ton of people turn out. These are two really big projects that will shape the future of Redcliff. We really just want to hear from the public and what they have to say.” 

The open-house is scheduled for Wednesday, January 16th from 3-7 p.m at the Redcliff Legion.