Nixa made a plan for a skate park upon community request, which had been ongoing for over 15 years. Located at Rotary Park, the overall cost of the skate park is estimated between $800,000 to $900,000, with the first phase costing around $400,000. The skate park is going to take place in three phases as the city gets the budget for sections to be built.
Matt Crouse, head of Nixa parks and recreation, has been looking forward to the plan— active in the design process, as well as the budgeting aspect.
“It’s something the community’s asked for, for a very long time, so we’re excited about being able to hopefully make this a reality here soon, but I think it’ll be a big draw for those that are of the biking, skating community to be able to come in and have a place to play, have a dedicated spot,” said Crouse. “If you think about this particular area, this is where most of those kids are skating or biking now. They’re using the ditches there around Price Cutter or some of the businesses up in that corridor. This just puts them right up the road from a dedicated area that is meant for them to play.”
Hartsell has been one of the community members pushing for this project, with around 11 years of participation in the Skatepark Committee.
“Our names are still on it, but my kids grew up, and we didn’t really get very far with it, but we kept doing it,” Hartsell said. “We didn’t ever give up on advocating for it. We did a lot of fundraisers, [and] things like that. Whenever we got the notification that we could possibly get a skate park, and it’s another step forward, it was very exciting.”
Having a specific area for these wheeled sports will solve the terrain issue skaters in the community have and can allow interested people to improve their skills. Junior Guzman, a junior, who has been skating for over five years, said he looks forward to the park.
“A huge reason why I didn’t really stick to skating as much as I wanted to is because I didn’t have a dedicated spot to actually skate,” Guzman said.
With the addition, Guzman said he expects the popularity around skating to grow.
“I think whenever there’s anything like that, it just brings people together. It attracts people to the community,” Guzman said.
Freshman Derrec Raines, who has been skating since toddlerhood, said he believes it will have an effect on not just skater enthusiasts of the area, but businesses centered around the sport.
“I think it’ll bring more people to our skate shop, which is going to be really big,” “It’s going to have a lot of skate shops in the area. I think it’ll get kind of younger kids and mix up in the skating,” Raines said.
Ouch Skate Shop, a skate shop located at 104 E Mt Vernon St., has been involved with the development of the Nixa Skate park; they have been asked what inclusions they would like added. The shop has been in business for just over four years. With over 28 years of skating under his belt, Ouch Skate shop owner, Carwin Young, said he looks forward to having an accepted community for skaters to be a part of.
“Skateboarding is a pretty accepting and somewhat open minded sort of activity, we got all kinds of people in here,” Young said. “You can be really sporty, you can be a goth kid, you can do whatever. You can still skate, hang out with all the other skaters. Nobody cares.”
The skate park provides a place to skate without being kicked out or banned such as Nick Roberts, who moved out of Branson just to try and have a place to skate, emphasized the big deal for the skater community.
“I can’t even go there [Price Cutter] to shop. They told me that they were like, we were trespassing, but they didn’t give us a ticket or anything, they just gave us a warning. But if we go back, we get fully trespassed like everybody on the Ouch team, except for [Carwin],” Roberts said.
With a free park, safety rules or recommendations can’t necessarily be enforced, increasing the chance of injury. Raines has broken his own arm while skating and said he expects to see more falls.
“There’s gonna be bloodstains on the concrete within weeks, trust me,” Raines said.
However, as a father who used to take his kids to skate often, Chief of school police Jason Hartsell said witnessing people get hurt was rare, and falling is part of the learning process.
“I would take them [his kids] probably five or six times a month up there [Springfield skatepark], and there was maybe three injuries that I saw, but nothing that was broken bones or anything like that,” Hartsell said. “Now there will be probably all that, [broken bones] I mean, it’s a ride at your own risk kind of thing. I think, you know, that’s how kids learn … I think that’s a risk they take, but they would be doing it anyway in a parking lot somewhere, at a business or whatever, and it’s better for them to do it at a place where it’s meant for them to do it.”
This committee has done fundraisers for the park and hopes to continue raising money for it, on top of the city’s budget.
“We have a bank account where all the money is right now, I don’t know how much money is in there right now but it’s a good amount,” Hartsell said. “It’s not enough to finish the skate park, which is why we need the city to jump in and make/give money. So we did fundraising. Like one year: we did a little tournament, the kids… were at the X Center, and the kids would do tricks, things like that, and people would come and donate money…”
A fundraiser that would bring in a lot of money is things such as car-washing.
The largest way the park is getting money is from tax dollars coming into the local funding. When taxed, the city takes a small amount of money and it gets put into account, but the thing is, however, that all the money collected can not go to anything being updated or fixed, it fully goes to something new.
They have a Facebook account called Nixa Skate Park where they promote the project. Anyone is free to message if they have interest in helping fundraise.
