Skateboarders get their park in Newport. Now the fundraising effort to get it built begins
NEWPORT — Funding for a new skate park on a piece of land near the Community College of Rhode Island campus has officially kicked off thanks to a unanimous vote from the City Council on Wednesday evening.
“I think myself and hundreds of families out there can agree there is tremendous value in the quality of life and improvement that will be had for not just the kids in that area, which is a huge concern, but all the residents of the city. So I’m really happy about that,” said Doug Sabetti, president of the group Friends of the Newport Skatepark. “We are obviously ready to move forward in collaboration with city staff. We’re ready to see this come to fruition and make this happen.”
The effort to build a modern skate park in the city has been ongoing since before the previous skate park at Easton's Beach was demolished in 2016, Sabetti told the City Council on Wednesday.
It was renewed in 2021, when the City Council approved the facility be built in at Abbruzzi Sports Complex alongside a basketball court, but the 5-2 vote was contingent on the city being able to find a new space for the T-ball field that currently exists in that space. The FONS group held off on fundraising for the skate park until this issue was resolved.
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After complaints from Newport Little League and families of T-ball players, the city decided to look for a different solution and came across a recently acquired, commercially zoned parcel on the other side of the street. When city officials offered a portion of it for a skate park, they were able to draft a new resolution to request the City Council allow the skatepark to be built on that property.
“We finally have a piece of land we can all agree on,” said Councilor Lynn Underwood Ceglie, who sponsored the resolution. “The skate park people actually reached out to Councilor (Charlie) Holder and myself to discuss this new skate park, and they concluded they needed a resolution with no encumbrances in order to move forward with fundraising. So I said that I would do that.”
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The two councilors who voted against the first skate park proposal in 2021, Mayor Jeanne Marie Napolitano and Kate Leonard, flipped their positions the second time around. Both said their only concerns about the skate park was the location and said they were excited to see the issue resolved.
“The only reason I didn’t vote for it in the first place was the location,” Napolitano said. “This is the right location and I welcome it.”
The crowd of skateboarders who came to support FONS at the Wednesday meeting cheered after the unanimous vote took place. Now that the skate park has a place to call home, FONS is tasked with raising the money to build it.
The group accepts donations through its website (friendsofnewportskatepark.com) and through the mail. The current goal is $1.3 million.
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“This will allow the Friends of Newport Skatepark to move forward and raise funds,” Leonard said. “The proposal that came to us was that all funds for this would be privately raised with no expenditures for the city to incur and hopefully, there could be an endowment fund moving forward so that it goes on for a long time.”
This article originally appeared on Newport Daily News: Newport RI skate park fundraising effort begins after council approval
