Palouse skate park, garden work now underway

Palouse Arts Council volunteers prepare the skating area for a mural.

Work at Palouse Skate Park and Tony Kettel Skate Gardens is picking up as summer begins.

Expected to be added in the next month are an 80-foot sidewalk, an aluminum fence, a smaller concrete skate bowl and a mural.

Gravel has been compacted for an ADA-accessible sidewalk to be poured as soon as this week.

This sidewalk will have planting circles for perennials, and the Garfield/Palouse FFA students assembled six benches to be placed along the path.

Once the walkway is complete, organizers will put in an aluminum alloy fence around the 16,000-square foot Gardens space.

At the skate park, coinciding with pouring concrete for the sidewalk, a smaller skate-bowl will be constructed. Also, a quarter-pipe and other features will be created before the flat concrete pours link both the east and west ends of the park together.

Also coming is a mural to be painted on the outside wall of the large skate bowl.

On Monday, Palouse Arts Council members worked to clean the concrete in preparation. Potlatch artist Karen Rohn was chosen from a pool of applicants who submitted mural ideas to the Arts Council.

In addition, a planned picnic area is beginning to take shape in the space between the skate-bowl and the Palouse Police Department building.

“There’s an awful lot to do, we’re hoping many hands can make lighter work of it,” said volunteer Nicole Flansburg.

Much of the work for the Gardens involves clearing out the flat area at the top of the slope above the skate bowls. A former dumping ground, volunteers have cleared levels of dirt, only to find another level to clear, including strange items within. In May, volunteers dug up a car bumper.

“It’s come a long ways,” said Flansburg of the progress made.

Half of the bench seating for the Gardens remains available for sponsorship.

European Hornbeam trees will go behind the seating areas to serve as anchors for themed planting beds. Plantings to provide habitat for native birds will be installed along the west perimeter, and fundraising will begin for a staircase into the garden from the skate park level on Whitman Street.

The Tony Kettel Skate Gardens now hosts rain-or-shine work parties every Wednesday from 1-4 p.m. and each Saturday from 9 a.m.-noon throughout June. Anyone who wishes to volunteer is invited to do so and should wear proper attire and work gloves. Duties include light lifting, heavy lifting, raking, weeding, and other miscellaneous tasks.

More information may be found on the project website at http://www.palouseskatepark.com/gardens.

Both the Palouse Skatepark and Tony Kettel Skate Gardens are funded through grassroots efforts and are being brought to fruition through volunteer and partner contributions.