Amid finger-size models, a Rep Services Inc. dealer meets with skateboarders to plan Dade City's skateboard park.

By CHASE SQUIRES, Times Staff Writer

© St. Petersburg Times, published June 4, 2002 *

Amid finger-size models, a Rep Services Inc. dealer meets with skateboarders to plan Dade City's skateboard park.

DADE CITY -- The only skateboards Dade City skaters rode Monday at City Hall were 2 inches long. The only skatepark they tackled was on paper.

But Monday's meeting between skaters and skateboard park equipment representatives might plant the seeds of a very real park soon.

"We let them tell us what they want," Rep Services Inc. dealer Carl Sagro said. "We take what they give us; we let them compromise, then we go back and try to combine all those ideas."

On Monday, skaters used miniature rubber versions of the jumps and ramps the company sells and laid them out on a grid to create blueprints of their dream parks. Sagro and coworker J.T. Almon said it would take about a week to craft plans from the skaters' designs, and about a month to order and deliver equipment, if the city orders from them.

Skater Vincent Leschinski, 10, created a park full of obstacles -- spines, pyramids, fun boxes * and pipes -- then demonstrated how the skaters would flow through the setup, using a 2-inch plastic skateboard "ridden" by his fingers.

"The half pipe * would be here," he said. "And over there, two kicker ramps, then a front stall . . ."

The goal, the professionals said, is to create a park everyone would enjoy.

"You've got to build it right," Sagro said. "You've got to build it safe and build it so it attracts the kids."

Rep Services represents Minnesota *-based SkateWave * modular skate park equipment. The high-tech obstacles are made of steel and covered in PVC, far from the old wooden ramps locals such as Josh Chase build on their own. After skaters design the park, the plans are reviewed by professional skateboarders at the factory to be sure the park would be rideable and fun, Sagro said.

Dade City crews already have repaved a parking lot on the east side of City Hall and plan to put up a fence around it for a temporary skate park.

Eventually, the city aims to join with Pasco County to build a larger, permanent skatepark. The cost of a permanent park wouldn't be known until the city commits to a size, but Sagro said a park he worked on in Flagler County cost about $180,000, while a park he's working on for Spring Hill is expected to cost about $250,000.

Skateboarding downtown, a popular hangout for the local skaters, is illegal.

Jesus Calderon, 16, knows all about that. He's gotten 11 tickets from police so far.

"And arrested once," he added.

Ideally, a public skatepark * would be so popular, teens wouldn't be tempted to bounce off downtown's array of benches, stairs, curbs and handrails, Sagro said.

But build it wrong, without getting advice from the skaters, and the result is the opposite.

Lakeland built a park, but it isn't popular, 17-year-old skater Donald Chapin said. There's not enough room to maneuver, and some obstacles are too steep, he said.

"I got pitched the first time I tried it," he said.

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