LEWISTON – Kennedy Park’s new skating attraction is slowly taking shape.

A three-man crew from Rhode Island skate park construction specialists Breaking Ground has been slowly carving the deepest bowls and other attractions out of the park’s southeastern corner.

The rest of the crew has been finishing a similar skate park in Maryland this week.

“Right now, we don’t really have enough to do to keep more than three people busy,” said Nathan Guthrie, a member of the Breaking Ground team.

That’ll change next week. The entire eight-person team is scheduled to arrive. Part of the crew will start putting up the metal rebar and coping – a layer of water-shedding masonry – around the edge of the two big bowls near the center of Kennedy Park, while others keep moving dirt in the area closer to Park Street. When they’re done, that will become the street course, with ramps, benches, curbs and other obstacles.

They should begin pouring concrete into the bowls in the next couple of weeks, working their way toward Park Street by the end of September. That’s when the work should be finished, Guthrie said.

Site work on the project began in May, with city crews tearing up the old asphalt basketball court, installing drains and putting up a viewing stand. The park has been designed and paid for by the Skate Lewiston-Auburn Movement – area business owners, skaters and their parents.

The group began raising money in 2004, and has raised $200,000 to pay for the facility.

The work is not quick enough for many of the local skateboarders waiting for the park to open. Guthrie said they stop by regularly to check on the progress and complain it’s not fast enough.

“It doesn’t look like much at this point,” he said. “You move dirt around from place to place and it’s pretty hard to see a difference.”

But it’s important. Crews spend a lot of time sculpting the dirt to make sure they get just the right angles and curves. It can’t be fixed once the six-inch thick, steel-reinforced concrete coating is put down.

Wednesday and Thursday’s rain made the job a bit more difficult. Guthrie and his crew had finished shaping the two big bowls, only to have sides collapse in the rain.

They’ll build them up again and keep going next week, he said.

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