Can’t w8 to sk8

Story by Chris Graham
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So I’m telling Tim Gorman how bad I feel for him that he can’t take his two skateboarding children anywhere in Nelson County to engage in their sport of choice. And then he incriminates himself.

“Actually, Chris, I take my kids to Waynesboro to skate,” said Gorman, the man behing Sk8 Nelson, a community effort aimed at building a skatepark in Nelson County.

The Hamner Theater in Nellysford is hosting a benefit for Sk8 Nelson on Saturday. More details on the benefit are available at www.thehamnertheater.com.

“We’re frustrated skateboarders here in Nelson County. There’s no sidewalks, and the roads here are very roughly paved, and even the parking lots and things that are paved generally don’t let skateboaders have fun. The elementary-school parking lot, for example, has big signs that say, ‘No Skateboarding,’ ” Gorman said.

“I was a skateboarder growing up, and loved the sport, and basically just want to get a public space for the kids, young and old kids, to have a place to skate,” Gorman said.

Sk8 Nelson has been laying out plans for a new skatepark with the county department of parks and recreation and the Rockfish Valley Community Center. The design scheme is innovative, in my view, in that it allows for a phased development of the park to take into account the difficulty in raising a large amount of money up front. The design calls for the construction of small skate spots approximately 2,500 square feet in size that could be connected in the future by walking and biking trails with other skate spots.

The first skate spot is estimated to cost $5,000 to build and get online, according to Gorman.

“If we go with that plan, we can start small and start sooner with one element, and then basically build each successive element as we get more cash in. And then from there, hopefully we’ll generate more excitement and keep moving on,” Gorman said.