Concrete Being Poured At New Skate Park

Construction of the Upper Peninsula’s newest skate park is underway and with weather permitting, it may get to see some use before the season’s end.  Concrete pouring began this week in Houghton and is expected to wrap up within the next couple of weeks.

“They’re pouring concrete right now. There’s still quite a few pours left to go but they’re doing the flatwork ahead and then they start doing shotcrete on the features pretty soon. The weather’s still amenable to pouring concrete and it should be for quite a while yet so still a goal is to have a skate able park before the season closes this year,” said Houghton City Manager Eric Waara.

With construction underway, the Keweenaw Peninsula has already seen some economic benefits from the build as many of the materials needed such as rebar came from local suppliers. The project is also employing local laborers.

Waara said, “Just about everything but the custom steel is from here. They fabbed up the steel. A lot of the features are fabbed up in their fab shop and then trucked up here but everything from the concrete to the wood for the forms and the fill dirt, everything else is local including a lot of local labor that they’ve hired for the time that they’re finishing it.”

Initial plans of the build would have constructed the park in two phases, but after raising more than $200,000 for the project, both phases were consolidated allowing for the completion in the upcoming weeks.

The park is receiving some additional features, deriving from a successful fundraising campaign that exceeded original expectations.  Waara said, “We’ll have some landscaping work to do in the spring, of course, and be looking forward to a grand opening in the spring.”

The skate park is the second one to be built in the Upper Peninsula. The first was opened in Marquette in the fall of 2013.  Construction of the project is being completed by Spohn Ranch Skateparks of Los Angeles, California. The company has built many parks across the country.

“This has been a long process and the city is looking forward to having this park as an amenity in our park system. We’re thankful to the community for supporting it. Now we’ve just got the hard part of getting it finished,” said Waara.