Columbus Parks and Recreation Director Mark Jones signed an agreement with the Columbus Parks Foundation Monday that protects the foundation from being liable for any incident that could occur as construction begins on a new Columbus skate park.
The parks foundation is managing the funds for a $387,000 project that will replace the 15,000-square-foot wooden Jolie Crider Memorial Skate Park at Indiana Avenue and Marr Road with a new concrete facility. Because of the scale of the project, the foundation is taking responsibility for overseeing the construction site.
“At the end of the day, the parks department is going to be overseeing the actual construction that’s going on out at the skate park,” said Chip Orben, president of the Columbus Parks Foundation. “Therefore we just wanted to be really recognized as the financial vehicle being utilized to provide the funding for completion. In the event something were to happen — we didn’t want that to have any reflection on us from that standpoint.”
The new 12,000-square-foot facility will replace the original wooden structure which has sustained considerable damage during the past 20 years, park officials said.
The skate park is named in memory of Columbus North High School freshman Jolie Crider, who died from bacterial meningitis on May 7, 1998, at age 14. The city plans to retain the name of the park with the new facility.
The new skate park will be built by Hunger Skateparks, a Bloomington-based design and construction firm, and is designed by Janne Saario, an architect from Helsinki, Finland. This project will be Saario’s first skate park to debut in the United States. Saario has developed several skate parks in Europe.
An entryway leading into the skate park will be developed that will include a seating area, a ping-pong table and designated space where people can play cornhole.
“It really ties in with existing architecture in Columbus and not just existing architecture but the finished architecture,” said Stacy Findley, the parks department’s project and resource development director. “We haven’t really had that in a while, so it’s nice to know as a community that we’re continuing to invest.”
