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Medford skateboard park receives funding By JIM DAVIS A long-sought skateboard park in Medford will soon become a concrete reality. The park was given full funding last week, said Greg Jones, the director of the Medford Parks and Recreation Department. It will be 24,400 square feet -- twice as large as any other park of this type in Jackson County. "We'd like to have it done this summer," Jones said. "We don't know when exactly, but we do want it done this summer." The skateboard park will be on the east side of Bear Creek Park, adjacent to Highland Drive in southeast Medford. The skateboard park will be next to an asphalt, in-line-skating hockey rink, which is being built by a private effort. The concrete landscape of the skateboard park will include two bowls, one 9 feet deep and the other 7 feet deep, for skateboarders to ride through. The park also will have railings for the skateboarders to perform their moves and bumps and rises. The park was designed by Eric Dawkins, a local skateboarder who has designed parks in Talent, Ashland and Jacksonville. Several years ago, the parks department held a meeting at Kennedy School in northeast Medford to discuss a master plan for a park in that area, Jones said. A group of kids attended the meeting and urged the parks department to build a skateboard park. "It was kids who basically said they needed and wanted a skate area that was challenging for them," Jones said. The parks department and the Medford Parks Commission have been working at getting the park built since then. This month, the parks department asked for $50,000 to begin work. Last week, the Medford Budget Committee decided to give $90,000 to finance the whole skateboard park after a suggestion by City Councilman Jim Key, who is also the committee's chairman. Pete Young, the parks department projects coordinator, said that crews have done some of the ground work, but contractors will begin the heavy construction in the second week of June. Skateboarders using the facility will be unsupervised, although signs will warn them to wear helmets and pads. But skateboarding causes far fewer injuries than sports such as basketball, Jones said. He cited statistics from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission that ranked skateboarding as the 19th most injury-causing sport. Basketball ranked first. A BMX track at Bear Creek Park is already open. Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA