what is a youth recreation facility???

Reading though comments on the Riotact today it seems that we can be clearer on what this facility is.

It is an outdoor recreation space - in essence a playground for big kids. It will have some outdoor performance spaces for impromptu shows, Woden Valley Community Festival events and Youth Week events, for instance. It will have a range of shaded seating areas, activity spaces such as climbing wall and basketball, and a skate plaza and bowl area.

It is not is a youth centre. The Woden Youth Centre is a short walk away and provides an excellent service for young people in Woden, so there is no need for another centre.

Have a look when we post draft plans on Monday or come along on Saturday to the park.

Please remember to post a comment here to let us know what you think of the design - we need to hear your voice to make sure we get it right for as many people as possible.

Plans to be seen soon

Convic Design have been working away developing draft plans for the facility for you to see this week.

If you are a student at Canberra College you will get a chance to see them at a student workshop lunch time on Friday.

If not please come along to Eddison Park this Saturday morning between 9.30 and 11.30.

You will also notice I have put some other links on the sidebar - these are from skate park designer and builder Jeremy Butterworth's work in Sweden and well worth a look.

...and tenders for a project manager for the project close today and the successful tenderer will be announced in a few days.

Budget clarity

The ACT government has a commitment to providing an integrated multipurpose recreation facility for the Woden Youth Plaza. Whilst skateboarding will be a key element, it will be a component of a larger development of the space that will include play areas, social spaces and events infrastructure as well as amenity including shade, seating, access and soft landscaping.

As such the construction budget of around $1.1 million will distributed accordingly along these lines. We will be looking for feedback at the next consultation, Feb 28th, on the initial draft design.

RSL in support

Today PCL met with representatives of the Woden Valley RSL Sub Branch, who are very supportive of the project. The branch hosts a youth event each year where children from 20 schools come to partipate in a modified ANZAC day ceremony. This year the event will be held in early April. The branch sees the benefits of what we are planning as replacing lost facilities for families and young people in the Woden area.


PCL and Convic will be looking at ways to integrate information about the history of the park and its significance as a memorial site through the youth plaza design. The Master Plan for Eddison Park also proposes a memorial avenue between the pond and the cemetery.

For those who are not aware of the back ground to the park name Eddison, the Eddison family held land in the area of Woden with a homestead not far from the park. The three sons of the Eddison Family were all killed in WWII.

The remaining sister, Pam, still lives locally and is very excited about the plans for the park.

What you had to say

On January 28th over 50 people came to Eddison Park to tell Convic Design and PCL (Parks, Conservation and Lands) what they wanted to see at the park.


Here is a record of what people at the meeting wanted in the youth plaza. Comments from the reference group meeting will be in the next post.

Comments are listed on initial of contributor. Comments not noted by a particular person are under General Comments:

General Comments:
Lighting to skate at night like Tuggeranong
Shade trees – better than ‘roof / shelter’
Nerang – too many trees?
Damaging skate
Must be challenging to skate
Frankston kidney or clover bowl
Skydock 8ft quarters
Banked hip with gap, bank to wall
Big piece in the middle; image of Vietnam as long as it is skateable
Jersey Barrier
Joining bowls to create Box jump
Flatbank to quarter like Woodwood East
Not Gungahlin mellow transition
Key holes
Seperation between age groups but developmental
Paths connecting to other suburbs
Tight banks
Wedge ledge
Street
Flow all around not back and forth
Hips
Shade over park
Fast wall rides
Step back ledge
Step-up bowl section 8-9ft up to steep
4-5ft tight section
Cry if Geelong happens,; structure/artistic stuff to have lines to it
Volleyball wanted
Basketball 3 point area

J:
Jersey barrierTriangles / banks with edgeBank to wallHubbasFlatbank to hubbas Flatbar / across and down rail (doesn't have to be with stairs, flatbanks can be more user friendly)Euro gapTrannied planter boxes / creative trannied objectsTriangle legdes / wavy ledges / curved ledges

R:
Jump box
Hill n Dale

J:
Erindale Skatepark - banks
leaves from tree to be cleaned with broom
Poplars instead if Blue Gums
Gungahlin transition
Woden bowl destroyed
Weston Creek
‘Moonscape’ Plaza
Dubbo without the capsule
No social bowl, Pool literally tight transition
Crater Park
Bowl not like belco
Flow
No flat spots
Eurogap
Nerang limited flow, why put a block in the runway?
Keep it simple
Come out of 6ft quarter to ledge
Concrete skate surface
Civic doesn’t flow
Built well
Cater for BMX even though not really into it as long as its not all that ‘big ramps’
Doesn’t have to be pure bowl but speed and a ‘sense’ of a bowl
Kids learn so fast and have no fear

C:
Cairns, Waterloo/Fernside & Cammeray Plaza North Sydney
Ledges, stairs and rails
Frankston small bowl
Two blocks better than one in a run
Stuff for beginners

N:
Redlands Plaza, bowl no granite

P:
More street
Gungahlin, Weston, Tuggeranong
Already got ‘Viking BMX’?

C:
So much transition in Canberra
Walls with transition
Nerang
Banks in triangle keep skating
Flow continuously ride

W:
Frankston number 2 bowl not fast enough
Pambula big tranny to much flat not enough bowl section
12ft high hip woth semi box jump?
Go high

T:
Skate plaza
Tight transition
Weston mellow transition

R:
8ft bowl
Only enclosed bowl Belco

S:
Massive hip bank
The park must work both ways left and right

D:
Varsity bowl, not street course
Waves and cradle

E:
Water fountain
Lush seating environment

D:
Decent sized bowl

P:
Street park
Wack fun stuff you find in street
Hand rails not too high, handrails at Civic

J:
We try and skate street and we get kicked out
Capalaba ‘heaps good’
Bowl and street

R:
Banks, wall and stairs…heaps
Pyramid that you don’t think you can skate

B&J:
Creative, fun, flow, nothing gets in the way
No waiting around for the one way and one direction. Multiple directions
Stairs with bank up with eurogap to return
6 stair

C:
Something like Geelong is amazing

K:
Bowl, hips, sub boxes
Weston & Tuggeranong
Spine
Down capsule with ramp

L:
‘Wife chair’
Lounges

B:
Play music
Erindale banks are the best thing in Canberra Pros like Shane Croft, Jamie Thomas, Matt has go insane coverage
Tight transition which is difficult to skate

M:
Scooty Shearer ‘woopty woo’
Goanna Gold Coast RSLl pokies
Erindale banks
Brick and any materials! Wood
Acrylic/Polycarbonate see through
Abstract materials

L:
Pole jams
Wall rides
Before putting in concrete the bowl/bank used to be sick? A local skate spot(?) which was wrecked by lumping conc to create transition

A:
Curved ledge like Banana plastic park seats

P:
More car parking to cater for evens, office workers and school use carpark
Parking along entry to Cemetery would be good
Childrens area

Other comments:
Shade trees better than roof

Getting Started

Welcome to the Eddison Park Youth Plaza blog. This site has been set up for sharing information and comments on the development of a youth plaza in Woden Valley, Canberra. This is also our first go at using a blog for a project - so we welcome any feedback on the site.

Redlands Skate Strip - Convic Design

Geelong Youth Plaza by Convic Design

To bring you up to date - over the past 18 months (especially) there has been quite a bit of contact between the ACT Government and Skate park users. In undertaking several projects - which included the Belconnen and Tuggeranong skate park reviews (undertaken by Convic Design), we got to know a bit about what skaters were after - and also what the potential was for facilities for a wider range of young people.

The wonderful Canberra Skateboarding Association also put together a very well thought through submission to the ACT Government in mid 2008 which called for a youth recreation facility, incoporating skate elements. The submission also highlighted the need for a regional skate facility in Canberra.

In December 08 the Federal Government gave all local governments funds to develop projects which would stimulate the economy. The ACT, based on the hard work of people like you, decided that the best use of this funding was to develop a recreational facility for the young people of Canberra, and that the best place for this is in Eddison Park, Woden.

For those of you who don't know Eddison Park it is on the corner of Launceston St and Yamba Drive, opposite Canberra College and next to the cemetery.

The Federal Government has put one challenging condition on the funding - it needs to be spend by September 09. To help things move quickly Convic Design have been engaged to develop preliminary concept designs for this facility. Convic were chosen because of their past work in developing youth plazas which include, but are not only, skate parks.

A tender has also been advertised to appoint a project manager to take care of detail design and construction - the rest of the project.

In the meantime we have set up a reference group for the project (see sidebar) and had round one of consultation to get ideas last week - we had over 50 people turn up on a blisteringly hot day to talk to the design team and munch on hot pies, which went surprisingly quickly given how hot it was. I should be posting the comments from that event in the next couple of days.

So What Next?????

We will be back in a couple of weeks with some designs to get feedback on and will set up another time to come and talk to the team.

In the meantime feel free to leave constructive comments here. Everyone has a valid opinion and we would like to hear yours.

Lea Durie