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