Billings, Montana - The Skatepark * in Downtown Billings, already a hopping, eye-catching landmark at one of the main entrances to downtown, grew even more noticeable with the unveiling of "Head Over Heels," a 12-foot sculpture of a skateboarder.

Tom Madden's sculpture - of a boarder doing a handplant atop a curved concrete pedestal that says "Welcome to Billings" - stands at First Avenue South and South 27th Street, on the southwest corner of the $500,000 skate park that opened six months ago.

Greg Krueger, director of the Downtown Billings Partnership, noted that city fathers in Spokane built a skate park under the freeway, well out of sight.

"I think it says something for Billings that we showcase it at 27th and First Avenue South," he said.

Eighteen-year-old Noah Hostetler is pleased with the park, too. Six months after it opened, he still spends at least five hours a day there, every day. "If you keep progressing," he said, "it doesn't get boring."

Deke Purinton, 18, a co-manager of Beartooth Boards, which sells skateboard and snowboarding gear across 27th Street from the park, like Hostetler, would like to see a few new amenities, including lights so they could skate at night and bleachers so spectators wouldn't sit on the ledges, reducing the skatable areas and making it a little more dangerous.

Don Kearney, director of the Parks and Recreation Department, said his main goal now is getting enough money to put restrooms in a city-owned building just east of the park, putting up bleachers and ringing the park with sidewalks, to accommodate all the spectators and would-be skaters.

He said the department has put a $110,000 request into the city's capital-improvement budget for next year. If approved by the City Council, money for all three of those projects would be available next summer.

One of the young skaters that uses the park is 10-year-old Morgan Little Wolf, who gave his weight as "70-something." He's a regular, coming down after school at Washington * Elementary every day and staying "until it gets dark or until my mom comes to pick me up."

This article was originally entitled "Sculpture marks 6 months for successful skateboard park" and was found at http://www.billingsgazette.com/index.php?id=1& display=rednews/2004/11/13/build/local/25-skbd-park.inc .

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