A new skate park, promising more space and a wider variety of terrain to skate, could become a new addition to Grant Park.

Grant Park Conservancy president Robert O’Neill said that if the updates are made, the skate park would look much nicer and have more greenery. The process is still in its early stages, and O’Neill has spoken with the Chicago Park District Superintendent Timothy J. Mitchell and the public to see if they approve of the idea. O’Neill said he expects to have a public meeting to discuss a possible update for the skate park in March or April.

“Skateboarders really use [the skate park] year-round, weather permitting,” O’Neill said. “They’re out there at night; they’re out when it’s cold out, assuming there isn’t lots of snow. That’s another reason we want to have them. We want to activate the park. We want people in the park.”

The focus of the update would be giving skaters a more permanent area to use that blends better with surrounding Grant Park. O’Neill said the plaza could get funding from Lollapolooza revenue and the rest through other private means. Chicago Park District communications and marketing director Jessica Maxey-Foster said the city would not spend their own money on revamping a brand-new skate park. Just having an area for skateboarders to use is good for the park, O’Neill said.

The current skate park was built in October 2006 and was funded by the Chicago Park District. The Grant Park Conservancy helped plan it, and Chicago artist Dan Peterman designed the obstacles, ramps and rails.

Currently, the park’s focus is more on street skating with a flatter surface and smaller, moveable obstacles. Foster said that the Chicago Park District has gotten a lot of positive feedback about the park, but she had not heard about the possible update to the skate park.

Chicago Skateboard Association spokesperson person John Methvin said the Rob Dydrick/DC Shoes Plaza Foundation offered to help design and develop a plan for the revamped skate park. The Foundation built their first park in 2005 at pro-skateboarder Rob Dydrick’s hometown of Kettering, Ohio. They have new plazas planned for Santiago, Chile and Sunland Park, N.M. Designs for both can be found on their website at SkatePlaza.com.

The Chicago Skateboard Association has yet to make a proposal for the revamp of the skate park to the city. O’Neill worked with Methvin to organize the push for the update and said it will help make Grant Park greener.

“The fact of the matter is that the tennis courts out there right now are not really attractive,” O’Neill said. “They’re asphalt, so environmentally, they contribute to the heat island and rain water run-off. A skate plaza that’s green and has more landscaping and more trees will be greener for the community.

One of the reasons the current skate park was built was to give skaters a legal area to skate downtown without causing unwanted damage to city property. Since the current park was built, it has gotten more positive than negative feedback from people in the area. Some people have said, however, they fear more skateboarders will lead to more graffiti around the park, O’Neill said.

Skateboarder Jay Moore works at Uprise Skateboard Shop, 1820 N. Milwaukee Ave., and said skaters would not damage the park by spray painting it. He said all of the cameras and police downtown also make it very hard to graffiti anything in the area.

“It’s weird with graffiti, because I don’t see that as a skateboard thing,” Moore said. “Graffiti and skateboarding don’t go hand-in-hand to me. People say it does, but since I’ve been skateboarding, I haven’t seen any.”

Stevie Snyder also works at Uprise and has been skateboarding for almost 35 years. He said skateboarders and graffiti should be as far apart as possible, and that graffiti brings too much negative attention. He said larger style parks make more sense in smaller towns where there are not many spots to skate outside of the park but less so in a big city like Chicago. Snyder said the city needs skate spots not skate parks.

“A spot could be a place that has perfect marble benches,” Snyder said. “A spot could be a place that has a perfect pool, a snake run, anything and everything that’s skate-able. Instead of spending a million dollars in one spot, take that money and put it in 10 or 15 spots.”