LIFESTYLER
Happy FATHER’S DAY Skate park worth the wait
August 27 2013
Kaipara
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u by Alan Wheatley
“This is a cool facility, Dargaville is a cool town and we should be proud to say we come from here.”
A helping hand
Kaipara artists have swung in behind a fund-raising effort to send a young Mangawhai lad to play wheelchair soccer in Australia …
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Sam is off to Finland
If you think it’s a bit chilly now, spare a thought for Sam Willdig come January as he will be in Finland …
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Succulent seafood on display
On the edge of a bountiful Kaipara Harbour, you might expect easy access a variety of seafood …
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With those words, Kaipara Recreational Facilities Trust founding members Darleen Lang and Izaak Birch acknowledged the eight hundred submissions, nearly seven years since the idea took hold, countless delays, even more countless hours of volunteer work, goods and services scrounged wherever they could be found and of course money — $250,000 of it — and declared Dargaville’s new skate park open for business. When it’s empty, it’s easy to imagine you are on the moon, as it’s a landscape of pale grey concrete, ramps, humps, rails and plains, but when it’s doing what it’s built for, the new park comes to pulsating, vibrant life in a blur of impossible manoeuvres on equally impressive machines, including skateboards, unicycles, push scooters and BMX bikes and some very athletic participants. One of the more unique aspects was that the people who use it pretty much designed it. When the concept was first mooted in 2007, a group of young skaters sat down with builders and architects and basically showed them what they wanted. Building contractor John Vuletich of Vuletich Engineering said right from the start, the town’s young people were involved. “The young people who were going to use it came up with the ideas and the plans, submitted them to the architects and then together, we designed the park around their ideas. The kids were great to deal with all the way through and it’s
p Flying high — first enthusiasts experience the new skate park
really a tribute to them that we have finished up with something they actually want to use — that they helped design.” He said while the original quote was just over $265,000, the final project will come in under budget, even with the weather slowing things down and he said he was delighted with that. The Kaipara Recreational Facilities Trust took on the project after securing almost the entire funding from the Lotteries Commission, The ASB Trust, the Kaipara District Council, plus other donations and then managed the project to its completion and Saturday’s launch. More than a 100 people who gathered for the event from all over
the Kaipara, Whangarei and Auckland, heard special tributes to committee treasurer Darleen Lang, contractor John Vuletich, original committee members and many organisations who supported the venture during the seven years it took to complete. Darleen Lang paid special tribute to Mr Vuletich whom she described as ‘way more than just a contractor’, adding he had spent countless personal hours on the project. The 1,000 square metre park next to the swimming pool in Selwyn Park is finally up and running and in the words of one out-of-town skater, it is a ‘true multi-purpose new skate park the town can be proud of.’
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