The latest twist in Elon’s efforts to establish a new skatepark could prove almost as thrilling as riding the half-pipe to some of this project’s most enthusiastic supporters.
This potentially exhilarating development occurred Friday when the office of Governor Josh Stein announced that the town’s proposed skatepark will receive a sum of $362,500 from North Carolina’s Parks and Recreation Trust Fund.
This newly-announced grant is one of 25 that the trust fund’s administrators have approved out of a field of 42 applications that had come in this year from all over the state.
[Story continues below special subscription offer.]
MORE ELON NEWS THAN YOU’LL FIND ANYWHERE ELSE! SUBSCRIBE TODAY!
Also among this year’s awards is a grant for $500,000 that Alamance County has nabbed to expand the state’s Mountains-to-the-Sea Trail onto nearly 800-acres of vacant riverfront property near Saxapahaw.
Elon’s haul from the trust fund may seem a bit modest compared to the county’s half-million-dollar jackpot. Yet, it effectively doubles the revenue that an ad hoc citizen advisory board had previously amassed toward the skatepark’s anticipated cost of nearly $700,000.
The fundraising efforts of Elon’s Skatepark Committee got off to flying start in the spring of 2024 when the town council agreed to chip in $295,000 to develop this skating venue on 1.2-acres of undeveloped land at Beth Schmidt Municipal Park.
The council’s pledge seems to have dwindled to $245,000 by May of 2025, when a consultant for the committee unveiled a proposed design for the park with a price tag of $666,075. At that point, however, the committee had managed to scare up another $74,575 from Impact Alamance, a nonprofit wing of Cone Health, along with $14,000 in smaller private donations as well as $45,000 in in-kind contributions. In order to cover the rest of the project’s expense, the committee’s members hit up the parks and recreation trust fund for an additional $332,075.
The committee’s initial overture to the trust fund effectively spun out when the governor announced the awards for 2025. Yet, its members decided to submit another request earlier this year, and in spite of the beating their expectations had taken, they resolved to scaled up their request by $30,000.
The fact that the trust fund’s administrators approved this increased amount has been chalked up to the committee’s own efforts by councilman Quinn Ray, who has served as a liaison to this citizen advisory board.
“The application was written by the volunteers,” Ray said when he announced the grant’s approval to the rest of the town council on Tuesday. “It really validates our volunteer committee.”
