Lee — For youngster Travis Markham, an afternoon spent at the local skateboard park means “fun” and a release after long school days. With his mother Cristina Markham, he has enjoyed the venue for the last three years, carting his roller skates, bike, skateboard, and scooter for “wheelies” and “jumps.”
Now, the nine-year-old has even more reason to venture to the Lee Athletic Field’s Skatepark, 126 Housatonic Street, following a $30,000 improvement project residents approved at last year’s Town Meeting. The total $80,000 appropriation includes $50,000 for a Ninjafit Playground to be opened at the site next year; an athletic center that already includes a pavilion, toddler playground, fitness section, tennis, and pickleball courts; and sport fields.
“This gives my kid, at any time of day, somewhere to go, especially in the summer, to let off some steam, get his wiggles out,” Cristina Markham said. “It gets him away from his screen, for sure.”
A video of Travis Markham and Benson Vorce showing off their jumps on the park course can be found here.
Using Community Preservation Act funds, the Lee Youth Commission headed up the work to alleviate the skatepark’s deficiencies, making the venue “more conducive to all ages,” Lee Youth Commission Chair Kathy Hall said. “It’s been a couple of years in the planning, and to see it come to fruition, it’s just fabulous,” she said of the July 11 reopening.
The project came in slightly under budget, Lee Youth Commission Treasurer Joshua Bloom said, and 21st Century Concrete Inc. performed the improvements assisted by the Lee Department of Public Works.
Now a college sophomore at Clarkson University, local skateboarder Nicholas “Nico” Resca teamed up with Bloom to bring the project to life, drafting the skatepark design and getting approval from the town’s Conservation Commission. With his passion for skateboarding in tow, Resca, a high school junior at the time, joined the Lee Youth Commission. “I had been skateboarding around the Berkshires for a while and I [thought], ‘My hometown park, it’s good but I really want a little bit more,’” he said. So, recognizing that the path to improving opportunities begins at Town Hall, Resca marched into the building and signed up.
Originally a loop with a grassy center, the potential for accidents at the old skatepark was high should skaters travel in opposite directions, creating bottlenecks, Bloom said.
For Bloom, Resca addressed the added issue of the skatepark not meeting the needs of skilled skaters. “When there are beginner skaters and advanced skaters in the same place, that just caused more tensions,” he said.
Bloom was moved by Resca’s enthusiasm to “effect change in his town,” and the two pushed forward with the proposal so local users wouldn’t be forced to travel to Great Barrington, Pittsfield, or North Adams “to find a quality skatepark.”
Their efforts doubled the size of the park, filled in its center, and squared off the back corners, leaving the obstacles, ramps, and rails in place. The result offers users an open space, allowing novices and afficionados the ability to experiment with the park, traversing in different directions and using the site in new ways, Bloom said. “We hope that people will take advantage of it,” he said.
The project began in April and concluded in early July, with the park’s signage set to be reinstalled this month.
Videos showing the start of the project and its finishing touches being installed can be found here and here, courtesy of Joshua Bloom.
Following several starts and stops beginning in 1977, the first skatepark was built by teenagers on an old basketball court within the Lee Athletic Field. The current iteration of the skatepark opened in 2009 through a joint effort between its founding organizers, the Kiwanis Club of Lee, and town officials.
An avid skateboarder, Lee Library Director Damon Vorce plans to teach skateboarding lessons to youth soon. See the Lee Library’s website or the Lee Youth Commission’s Facebook page for more information. “For one, it’s just great to have a skatepark in a town but then to have a town that actually upkeeps the park is very important,” he said.
“Maintenance is very important,” Hall added of the DPW budget contributions to ensure the park is up to snuff.
Vorce shares his hobby with his nine-year-old son Benson. “There’s so many people my age who grew up skateboarding in the ’90s whose kids are doing it,” he said. “You see the older adults with their kids.” The Vorce family hops around, exploring different towns for their skateparks while treating themselves with a round of ice cream afterward.
Eighteen-year-old Lee resident Zavien Siok admits to “running a scooter” for most of his young life and has been at the Lee Park every day since it reopened. The sport offers “an escape from internal issues.” “It’s a way to feel the adrenaline,” Siok said before taking a jump on the afternoon of July 15. “It can be stress relieving and stress inducing.”
Along with the Lee Youth Commission, Resca and Bloom collaborated on a second venture to bring skaters together at the park: a skatepark competition as part of Lee Founder’s Weekend celebration that is slated for September 19 through 21 this year.
“We do have big ideas for this community and things that are for everybody, not just our youth, we want everybody to be involved,” Hall said.
For Hall, the park’s full gambit of year-round activities—including an ice-skating rink constructed each winter—is a way to keep local children engaged and attract young families. Resca agrees that Lee’s youth activities are a draw for the town.
“When new people are checking out [Lee], they don’t just check out the school and the street they might live on, they check out, ‘What does the community offer,’” Hall said. “And this is what we offer.”
