Cardiff’s skate community is celebrating the opening of a new 1,000m2 skate park.
The ‘East Side’ skate park, next door to Eastern Leisure Centre in Llanrumney, was designed by award winning consultants VDZ+A and Newline Skateparks in consultation with the local skateboard community and features a series of ramps, hips, curbs, ledges and rails as well as a quarter pipe.
Dirty Sanchez star and keen skateboarder Matt Pritchard said: “It’s what we need in Cardiff. I’m 52 now, and when I first started skateboarding, we had nothing in Cardiff, so to have facilities like this is amazing. It’s really good for the kids as well, especially now that skateboarding is in the Olympics and is being taken seriously. Fair play to Cardiff Council, they’ve done an amazing job, and it’s nice to see them investing in skateboarding in Cardiff.”
Stuart Maclure, Development Manager at BetongPark, the company that helped with the design and built the skatepark, said: “The skatepark is really significant for the community here – it’s replaced an old, outdated park. It really is a world-class facility. It’s very spacious, with all types of different skatepark elements. Another aspect that makes the park unique is the floodlights, so people can use it throughout the winter and into the evenings.”
Cabinet Member for Culture, Parks and Events, Cllr Jennifer Burke, said: “This is the first skate park to be built as part of our new skateboard strategy and it’s already proving to be a real hit with the city’s skate community.
“The skate scene in Cardiff is really vibrant and diverse – you’ve got young children and teenagers, all the way through to older skaters who are now introducing their own kids to what is now an Olympic sport. The new East Side skate park is part of our long-term strategy to support and grow the skateboard community for years to come.”
Designed to be suitable for skaters of all ages and abilities, the new facility is built from concrete, providing a higher quality, lower maintenance and lower noise facility than the old timber-framed skatepark it replaces.
The Council’s skateboard strategy sets out a framework for incorporating skateable spaces into parks and the wider public realm as well as the development, subject to funding, of three more new skate parks, serving central, north and west Cardiff.
South Cardiff, which is already home to the city’s only other concrete skate park in Cardiff Bay, could also benefit from a slightly smaller new skate park.
