Skate Plaza Celebration
MARQUETTE — Skaters of Marquette, rejoice. The Skate Plaza near the YMCA is going to get better and better. Today’s celebration at the plaza was a gleeful response to the crowd funding money that has been raised and spent on improving the park.
Two years ago, the Michigan Economic Development partnered with Patronicity, a crowd funding group, to help raise money for parks and plazas. The Skate Plaza got in on the crowd fudning and received some key donations.
“We started this plaza because our kids in Marquette were getting ticketed, fined, (and) their boards were being taken away from them. They needed a safe place to skate,” explained Skate Plaza co-founder, Nheena Weyer Ittner.
“With the kids, we designed a plaza,” she continued, “which is basically taking all the urban elements that they like to skate on and putting them all into one safe place. The other thing is, kids want to be seen. So we put it right on a street corner where people can see them.”
Among improvements to be made: fixes to some unexpected erosion on some of the park’s features; some artsy new benches; and recognition for all the people giving money to the plaza.
All in all, close to $20,000 were raised to make this possible.