Williamstown Skate Park Planners Ramp Up Fund-Raising
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The group planning a new skate park for a town-owned site on Stetson Road hopes to get construction underway in the spring — if it can raise a little more than $500,000 needed to reach its goal.
Bill MacEwen was before the Select Board to give the body an update on two Purple Valley Trails projects in town: a mountain bike trail network that held a grand opening celebration in October and the replacement of the town's former, out-of-date and dilapidated skate park.
The latter initiative is fully designed, and Purple Valley has a contractor lined up to build the all-concrete layout of ramps and hills. But to break ground, organizers need about $720,000, MacEwen said.
"We're 27 percent funded, which is a significant amount," he said. "We have $203,000 as of this morning, which is a lot of money to put toward a community project."
McEwen said Purple Valley Trails has received grants from five corporate donors (the Community Preservation Coalition, Guntlow and Associates, Stewart's Shops, eBay and National Grid) as well as private donations to surpass the $200,000 plateau.
He said the group will be submitting a request for Community Preservation Act funding again for the fiscal year 2027 funding cycle. In May, town meeting approved a $32,000 grant of CPA funds toward the project.
In November, the Community Preservation Committee, which vets grant requests and makes recommendations to town meeting, learned that it expects to have about $624,000 in available funds for FY27, though about $187,000 of that figure would need to be dedicated to or held in reserve for three CPA purposes (historic preservation, open space preservation and community housing) that are unrelated to the aims of Purple Valley Trails.
McEwen said grants akin to the commonwealth's Mass Trails program that helped create PVT's mountain bike network are not available for projects like the skate park.
"What we've found is, in the state of Massachusetts, a lot of the funding is really trail focused," McEwen said.
"We know how to get grants. The grants just aren't there."
McEwen said that PVT received grants totaling $300,000 from industry sources, the state and various organizations toward the mountain bike network.
Although the grants may not be there for the skate park, the demand is, McEwen reminded the Select Board.
He reminded the board of a 2019 town survey that found strong dissatisfaction among residents with the recreation opportunities for teenagers and a 92 percent vote at town meeting this year in support of the CPA allocation.
"We have a very, very clear mandate to prioritize this project in town," McEwen said.
He also pointed to successful recent skate parks built in Bennington, Vt., and North Adams. Purple Valley Trails is working with park designer and builder Grindline Skateparks of Seattle.
McEwen said PVT was to hold a fund-raiser on Thursday, Dec. 11, at the Berkshire Cider Project in North Adams to continue its campaign to fund the skate park.
As for the mountain bike trail network, McEwen said the PVT facility has seen more than 1,000 visits and 300 riders in its first year and had about 100 people at the grand opening over Indigenous Peoples Day weekend.
Monday's Select Board meeting saw the panel go through the annual tasks of issuing renewals of licenses for eateries, bars and alcohol retailers for calendar year 2026.
It also saw the return to two policies that the board discussed this year.
At Chair Stephanie Boyd's suggestion, the board revisited a policy on memorial gifts to the town. The body previously established a procedure to receive items like benches and trees for town property in consultation with the Conservation Commission, which controls several well-known town public spaces, like Margaret Lindley Park.
Boyd asked the board to revisit language in the policy that called out those Con Comm lands and noted that the commission's authority, "derive[s] from its exclusive statutory jurisdiction and from the acts of town meeting over the years transferring the commission sole authority over nine separate parcels of land."
Boyd said that clause "oversteps the intent" of the memorial gift policy.
"I don't even know that we can say the Con Comm has 'exclusive statutory jurisdiction,' " Boyd said. "Well, we can say it, but it has nothing to do with benches."
The Select Board voted, 4-0, to a revised policy that drops the language Boyd identified. It also unanimously voted to codify a policy on reimbursement of Select Board members' registration and travel expenses for professional conferences, as previously discussed.
At one point, a question was raised about whether a $2,000 Select Board budget requested for FY27 would be adequate. Town Manager Robert Menicocci said, historically, that figure would be more than enough; for the fiscal year that began on July 1, the board members have spent $147, he said.
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