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Community Helping Hands Completes Partial Skate Park Reconstruction

The “Soar Up” skate park at Community Helping Hands, located inside Jamestown’s Gateway Family Center at 31 Water St., recently installed 59 new plywood panels to replace portions of the skate park that had been damaged following a March 8 wind storm that blew off the roof above the park. P-J photo by Gavin Paterniti

Blessings sometimes come in disguise, as was recently experienced by a local community organization.

After averting a potential disaster following a storm that left part of its facility damaged, Community Helping Hands — located in Jamestown’s Gateway Family Center — is now the owner of a new roof and a partially reconstructed skate park for local youth to enjoy.

The impetus for the roof and skate park rebuild came on March 8, following a wind storm that blew the building’s metal roof off and subsequently damaged portions of the plywood skate park with rainwater. Amy Rohler, Community Helping Hands executive director, said the organization was fortunate that nobody was injured and that insurance money was able to cover the cost of the roof replacement.

“Initially, we weren’t sure what was going to be covered by insurance and what wasn’t, so our Family Center Manager, Nick Baglia, started a GoFundMe campaign online to help pay for it,” Rohler said. “It turned out that the insurance was going to be able to cover a majority of that cost, but it was actually really great to see the community kind of rally around us.”

After assessing the damage to the skate park, 59 new sheets of plywood were brought in and installed to replace the areas that were in the worst shape. Rohler said the online GoFundMe campaign, which is perpetual, has since raised more than $2,600, receiving several personal and individual donations, as well as support from a skate park in Rochester. With the roof and skate repairs already paid for, the money left over from and continuing to be garnered by the campaign will now be used for the purpose of general maintenance to the skate park.

According to Rohler and Baglia, there is no longer an active skate park for youth in the Buffalo area, making those located in Cleveland and Rochester the closest to the one in Jamestown’s Gateway Family Center. They used this to highlight the importance of the skate park to Jamestown’s youth.

“This is something that Jamestown kids can take advantage of any time of the year, and it’s a better alternative for them than what they might get up to out on the streets,” Baglia said.

“This is something that’s hard to recreate anywhere else, because you can’t just up and move the skate park to a different part of the building. This is really a unique thing for kids that have an interest in using it,” Rohler said. “And the other component to it is that it’s important to keep it going as a community asset. Even if you don’t ride or your kids don’t ride, I think you benefit from keeping the kids off the streets and having a place where they’ll be safe and monitored by adults. That’s the kind of thing you don’t always find even in an outdoor park.”

The Gateway Family Center, which houses Community Helping Hands and its “Soaring Up” skate park, is located at 31 Water St. The skate park and the Gateway Family Center can both be found on Facebook and on Instagram using the handle @gateway14701.

The skate park’s GoFundMe campaign can be found at gofundme.com/save-the-skatepark.

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