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Hardcore Skateparks Announces USGBC Membership

Hardcore Skateparks is now a member of the U.S. Green Building Council. Staff members are currently pursuing LEED accreditation.

USGBC's Mission: To transform the way buildings and communities are designed, built and operated, enabling an environmentally and socially responsible, healthy, and prosperous environment that improves the quality of life.

Missouri firm wins skate park contract

A Maine bidder objects to the choice for the Dougherty Field project, which could open in May.

By JUSTIN ELLIS, Staff Writer

February 13, 2010

PORTLAND — A new skate park could be open as early as May, now that the city has awarded the contract to build it at Dougherty Field.

Hardcore Shotcrete Skateparks of Missouri has been selected by a committee to build the $240,000 project in the Libbytown neighborhood.

The construction would cap more than three years of work to build a new park, which will replace one on Marginal Way that was torn down.

But a Maine company that was in the running to build the park has protested the decision. Tom Noble, president of Who Skates in Kennebunkport, says the city failed to follow the proper decision-making process in choosing Hardcore Shotcrete.

City officials say they adhered to the process and the project will go forward.

"In the end, the winner won by a large margin and there was across-the-board support for (Hardcore) to do construction of the skate park," said City Councilor David Marshall, a member of the skate park selection committee.

The committee of city officials, skateboarders, BMX bikers and others scored Hardcore Shotcrete's proposal the highest among five submissions.

Sally DeLuca, the city's recreation division manager, said construction will start when the ground thaws, with the goal of having the park completed before the end of the school year.

Hardcore Shotcrete's plan calls for a plaza-like park with stairs, railings, ramps and a concrete bowl on 27,000 square feet on the St. James Street side of Dougherty Field.

Hardcore Shotcrete has built parks in Colorado, Arizona and California.

"We've worked so hard to get a skate park back to Portland and it's finally happening," DeLuca said.

Skateboarders have been without a park in Portland since The Forum off Marginal Way, a park with wooden ramps, was torn down in 2005.

Over the last several years, the city has worked with skateboarders, bike riders and neighbors of Dougherty Field to choose a design and find funding for the park. The city received grants including $10,000 from the Tony Hawk Foundation and a $50,000 matching grant from the Maine Community Foundation.

On Friday, Fitzgerald responded to Noble's protest, saying the city adhered to the proposal process.

In a letter, he said the city typically checks references only for front-runners in the process, and the skate park committee indicated that Hardcore Shotcrete was preferred over others.

"Your letter of protest has not swayed our trust in our selection process or our selection of Hardcore," Fitzgerald wrote.

Marshall said the city has been transparent in the process of developing the new skate park, and Noble was part of it.

Marshall said the new park will be important to the city as a place for the community to gather and to draw skateboarders away from streets in the Old Port.

"I'm really excited about it," he said. "It's been a really long road for us to get to this point."