Last night on the WFMZ’s 10pm News, our head of Parks & Rec Ralph Carp’s made a very honest plea to the community- especially the skateboard community about why it’s our time to step up and support our own skateplaza.

After finally getting all the bid information back from the construction company awarded the job to build the 2nd Phase as well as the costs for engineering everything below ground that you don’t see the final cost is $400,000.

Ralph Carp and the Parks & Rec Department have aggressively gone after State grant money, community dollars for open space projects and have routed every available dollar they could within reason to support the Bethlehem Skateplaza- and they have not done one trick there.  They just care about giving skateboarders a place to do what they love.  Right now, their efforts have raised just a little over $300,000 in funding for this 2nd Phase. Not to mention the 3/4 million they raised for Phase 1.

We reported the amount we needed to raise to complete the 2nd Phase as it was meant to be build was $40,000 but for better or worse, that amount has been raised to $75,000.  $75,000 WE AS A SKATE COMMUNITY NOW HAVE TO SOMEHOW RAISE BEFORE CONSTRUCTION CAN BEGIN.

I’m almost 100% none of us have $75,000 in our pockets to give to the Bethlehem Skateplaza BUT there are a lot of skateboarders (and BMXers) in the Lehigh Valley and beyond that love and use the skateplaza on a daily basis.  Let’s break this down . . . .

Read  the rest after the jump…

The newscaster said at $50 brick, we’d need 1,500 people to buy bricks.

Ralph mentioned on the news at roughly 50 skaters a day use the skateplaza. I’d argue that number is higher but let’s say it is 50 new skaters a day use the skateplaza on average throughout the year.   365 days a year x 50= 18,520 skaters, BMXers, rollerbladers or scooter riders used the skateplaza. Then let’s times that by 2 because the skateplaza is turning 2 soon.

Even if we take into account Winter- which hasn’t closed the skateplaza yet this year- and we scale that number down to 15,000.  That’s still a big enough pool of people who COULD choose to give back to the skateplaza that is FREE TO THE PUBLIC.

In all honesty, it doesn’t really matter to Ralph if the skateplaza gets built complete because he’s not the one who goes there everyday to ride it- WE DO.  So we are the only ones that suffer if the plaza isn’t built to its complete design goal.  We are the ones with less to skate.  We are the ones who lose out. The City has done EVERYTHING it can do. Now is our time to step up and help ourselves.

Can you buy a brick?

Can you tell your parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles about how much skateboarding means to you and why they should support the skateplaza too?

The crew of skaters you ride the plaza with everyday, can you guys pull money together to buy a brick?

Can you try to spread the word about the buy-a-brick at work, school, at church or at a club you’re a part of?

Homebase will continue to do fundraisers and hold events to raise money for the skateplaza but in the end- buying everyone their own personal, custom, engraved, tax deductible brick is THE BEST WAY we can raise the money we need to grow.

Please support the Bethlehem Skateplaza Buy-A-Brick Fundraiser.

Thanks to A.R.T. Productions for the 3-D design work.