Ive heard a few rumors of a planned Piccolo renovation but didnt know all the specifics of it. I hit up my buddy Jake, this is what he had to say....
Broward county has ~$100K to spend on Brian Piccolo park - the entire park, but the softball fields and soccer stuff don't really need much, so they are going to end up with somewhere around 80K for the skatepark, which does need the most maintenance. They decided to have meetings to get input from both groups, the skaters and the bikers, to let everybody know what is up and to get a feel for what everyone wanted to see happen. That is also when they told us they are getting the quiet waters stuff, which to me isn't really that good of a deal because they are prefab metal ramps, but they could be re-used to make new stuff. The county has carpenters that are full-time that will be assigned to work on the park. One of the main items is to fix the vert ramp because a lot of skaters and bikers want to use it, but apparently it was modified poorly in the past and that makes it really dangerous to ride. They are also re-doing a lot of the skatelite, which will take a large portion of the budget. Eventually, they are looking to have a part-time carpenter who will work directly and only for the skatepark, so if something needs fixing, they can fix it right away. We are trying to get the people who built Spinner's yard in to at least give an evaluation and suggest a course of action because the county's carpenters are most definitely not specialized in this sort of work. The county is looking for volunteers for physical labor, they have an application form you have to fill out and then they will work to set up days and times when work is going on that volunteers can show up to help speed the process along. They do not have any proper drawings of the park at all, so I decided to try and draw it in Google Sketchup and I was fortunate to have 4 days on a ship 'babysitting' an antenna, so I have gotten pretty efficient at drawing ramps. I showed it to the county people at the park on Thursday and they are over the moon about it. Having it in this format will allow us to virtually move things around in the next meeting so everyone can see how it will look.
-Jake Kooser
