Some want to turn the stage at the Community Center into an indoor skateboard park.
By Donna M. Perry
Staff Writer

FARMINGTON – Selectmen didn’t say “no” to a proposal to convert the stage at the Community Center into a skateboard area. But they didn’t say “yes” either.

Farmington recreation directors Steve Shible and Aaron Keegan would like to offer youth another exercise option and a place to practice their talent. The stage has been used for storage for many years.

On Tuesday, some selectmen had concerns about changing the historic character of the building, liability, cost, supervision and some lingering memories of the Dragon Nest, an outdoor skatepark in the early 1990s, which was converted to a kiddie park in 1995.

The stage conversion is estimated at $5,000 to $7,000, which includes enclosing the stage and installing plastic Lexan windows on one wall so that people outside “The Chamber” could watch skateboarders. The cost for the conversion would be put in next year’s budget.

Dozens and dozens of kids have expressed a need about going some place close to skateboard, Keegan said.

Kids going to the Community Center have increased at ages, he said.

“This place has become a very popular place to go,” Keegan said.

Besides offering a gym, there are computers, televisions, a game room, Ping-Pong, air hockey game and other such activities.

Selectman Mark Cayer said he supports the idea of keeping kids active, but raised the issue that the historical character of the building would change. He was also concerned about liability insurance and where the money would come from since the budget had just passed.

“It’s just taking away something that had been there for years,” Board Chairman Mary Wright said.

Wright also said she recalled how much work and money went into opening the Dragon Nest and then how it became unused.

Shible said it took so long for the park to get going that the kids who had started it grew up and moved away.

Selectman Dennis Pike noted he had received his diploma on that stage.

Looks or usefulness

Is it better to have something that looks nice or something that is used? parent Scott Hall asked.

There were 15 to 20 kids in the Community Center playing games in the game room Tuesday afternoon, Hall said, and 10 or 12 kids outside the center getting spoken to about skateboarding in prohibited places.

“This is an exercise thing,” Hall said about the proposed skateboard area.

Hall said he pays $300 a year for his son to go to the Carrabassett Valley Anti-Gravity Center.

There are several others from Farmington who also travel to the center, he said.

One of the kids instrumental in raising money for the Dragon Nest, Hall said, was Seth Wescott who has participated in the X-Games.

Selectman Stephan Bunker said he hasn’t seen the stage space used appropriately in many years and hasn’t seen groups coming back to ask to use the stage area.

Money to do work on stage curtains was eliminated from the recreation budget in 1991 or 1992, Shible said. He also noted that most of the theater stuff is happening at other places around town.

Selectmen requested more information about how the recreation people would make a skateboard area and keep the character of the building, and about liability.

dperry@sunjournal.com

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