Vandalism shuts skate park, cancels planned Ramp Jam
Keene’s skate park on Gilbo Avenue was closed Friday afternoon, its gate covered by a plywood sign and its ramps cordoned off with police tape after vandals damaged some of the ramps at the park last weekend.
The Ramp Jam, which includes skateboard, bicycle and roller skate contests for area youth, was to take place today from 4 to 6 p.m., but was shelved earlier this week when vandals hit some of the skate park’s structures last weekend, said Andrew S. Bohannon, Keene’s director of parks, recreation and cemeteries.
“With the half pipe, they kicked the back wall, the support wall so you don’t fall over, and kicked that off the brace that supports that,” he said. “And what would happen is somebody could come up the ramp, land, and fall right through.”
The skate park off Gilbo Avenue has been closed, temporarily, since Tuesday, and Bohannon hopes it’ll be reopened by next weekend, he said.
“It’s pretty disheartening,” he said. “We put signs up all around town to get kids enthused about the event we’re holding, but we have to realize (closing the park) is for the good of the community and the kids who want to use this facility.”
It remains unknown how much the repairs will cost, as city officials wait to hear back from contractors for an estimate, Bohannon said.
This is far from the first incident of vandalism at the skate park, which has become a popular gathering spot for young people, often resulting in destructive behavior in recent years, Bohannon said.
“There is an element that does not use the park, or uses it for all the wrong reasons, and that’s where the vandalism occurs,” he said. “For whatever reason, there’s been a group all summer long destroying the fence that surrounds the park, taking the beams out of the fence and actually busting holes in the tops of the ramps, throwing the poles down it, which creates a situation where you have a big stake coming out of the thing, waiting to impale somebody, basically. We’ve been able to take care of it immediately, then find the same thing a few days later.”
The money to repair the damage comes out of a city budget line item for the skate park, but with an uptick in vandalism recently, those funds could start to run low, Bohannon said.
“We keep putting plywood on top of plywood, and it’s costly and tough to keep up with,” he said. “Now we’ve got to replace certain sections of the fence that lead to adjacent properties.”
For Keene police, it’s hit-or-miss trying to catch vandals, as an officer has to be patrolling the area at just the right moment.
“We increase patrols, but we also rely heavily on citizens,” said Keene police Sgt. Steven C. Tenney. “Margaritas is open most of the night, so hopefully someone would have the courage to call us if they saw someone inside the park damaging the place. Especially at night, guys are out on the bikes, so they kind of incorporate that into their college patrols, and it helps with the element of surprise, because it’s not a big car with bright lights coming at them.”
Although police haven’t made any recent vandalism-related arrests at the skate park, they have had to remove individuals during the past week who’ve hopped the fence while the park is closed, Tenney said.
“The foot patrols kind of go throughout the night, but we haven’t really pinpointed when it’s occurring yet,” he said of the recent vandalism.
As talk of future development along Gilbo Avenue continues, the possible relocation of the skate park remains an option, Bohannon said.
“It’s probably time to pull a group of people together, with the need to begin to fundraise if we want to accomplish this by 2014-15,” he said. “Ideally, I don’t think one particular company or organization can fund this project; it’s going to take a collaboration throughout the community, specifically the skate community, to make it happen.”
Bohannon has heard from a number of young people who use the park.
“I know a lot of the kids who bike and skate in the park, and they really care about it,” he said. “They emailed me, called me, came up and saw me, and they were pretty distraught.”
Standing outside the skate park Friday afternoon with his skateboard in hand, 16-year-old Jared T. Hayes of Westmoreland said he had been surprised and angry to find the opening to the park blocked off with a piece of plywood with “closed” spray-painted on it.
He’d been planning to attend the Ramp Jam for the first time and had been looking forward to meeting some new people. Now he said he just hopes the park opens before snowboarding season.
There are some great places to skate around Keene beside the skate park, he said, but they’re all illegal.
Bohannon said he’s optimistic about rescheduling the Ramp Jam event, but it may not be possible until spring.
Kyle Jarvis can be reached at 352-1234, extension 1433, or kjarvis@keenesentinel.com.
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