Landing their best trick yet, two students help secure more than $100,000 for Stewartville skate park
Aug. 7—STEWARTVILLE — They aren't even old enough to drive yet, but two students from Stewartville have spent the last two and a half years galvanizing their community around the idea of transforming an old tennis court into a skate park.
In that time span, they raised more than $100,000 for the project. And now, they're on the cusp of seeing their vision turn into reality.
"We always knew it was possible; we just thought it would take a lot more years," 14-year-old Parker Campbell said.
Both Campbell and 11-year-old Garrett Colligan ride BMX bikes and scooters. The town's landscape used to be their riding domain. They'd find stairs, streets and parking lots to challenge their skills with.
Eventually, though, they wanted to have an actual skate park.
The town already had a makeshift skate park: a handful of ramps that were placed on the old tennis court surface. But between the cracks, potholes, bulges in the aging surface, it was less than ideal.
They collected more than 300 signatures to show the Park Board that there was interest in the project. Once they got the go-ahead, they started raising the capital.
They bused tables for tips and a percentage of food sales. They created T-shirts and hoodies about the skate park project, with the silhouette of a skateboarder midair standing in for the "K."
They created a Facebook group and flooded it with post after post about sponsors who had donated, information about fundraisers, and pictures documenting the whole process.
Parker's mom Krystal Campbell said the effort became about more than just the skate park itself.
"I wanted to be part of this to show them that if they put the work in, they can do really big things," she said. "I think it's taught them a lot about caring for something in the community."
They started with a goal of $40,000. Based on their estimates at the time, that was going to be enough to lay a cement slab in Stewartville's Meadow Park where the old tennis court was.
Two years into their efforts, the group announced this past May that it had reached its goal of $20,000 for the first installment of the project.
Not long after that, the group dropped even bigger news, the project was chosen to receive $92,000 through a Lowes Hometown grant. The project was selected as one of 100 out of at least 2,000 nominations from around the country.
The Lowes grant will be enough to pour the concrete, add ramps, bike racks, benches, signage and landscaping.
"Instead of just a concrete pad, it's going to be a full-blown skate park," Garret's mom Audrey Colligan said. "These boys are finally going to get to see the last two years of their hard work pay off."
Now, heavy machinery has removed the old surface of the tennis court, paving the way for an army of skateboarders, bikes and scooters to descend on the area once the concrete is poured.
Even though they raised more than they thought they would be able to in such a short amount of time, they're still imagining more plans for down the road.
One thing they'd eventually like is a pump track, which is a type of course BMX bikers use.
The group is hosting another fundraiser from 11 a.m. until 8 p.m. on Saturday, Aug. 12.
So, how big are their plans for the park anyway?
"Big, big, big," Garrett said.
