Here’s some news that we’re bummed to hear! It sounds like after 18 years Rye Airfield skatepark out in New Hampshire has been put up for sale. This massive skatepark has been doing a ton for the Northeast, and it’s definitely a bummer to see they’re struggling, with COVID not helping things out! They’ve put things into plan to potentially keep operating until 2022 if everything works out, but it sounds like they could close at any time, especially if a buyer comes along for the building and land that isn’t interested in keeping the skatepark. Below you can find the official details from their website! Let’s hope they find a way to keep things going, or a new owner can take over that can make it work! It would be a bummer to see another amazing park close down!
Check out the full details below!
“Yes, it’s true. The park and all of the land we have around us is for sale. We were going to make this public on April 13th this year but we also knew that so many of our young customers had already had a rough go with remote learning and massive social changes. Losing what many consider their 2nd home would just add to it. There are so many reasons behind this decision but Covid is unfortunately the final straw for us to make this information public.
– Operate with sessions, currently referred to as training sessions with a coach on hand all the time to meet Covid standards, until a sale can be made. This could happen as fast as a couple months or take more than a year. We will stay open as long as we are not going into debt.
– If a sale doesn’t take place and we are still covering costs we will stay open until April 13th, 2022. It was always our goal to make it at least 20 years.
– If demand isn’t there for us to operate under current restrictions we will close the doors, that could be at anytime. IF sessions sell out we will keep adding them to meet demand.
We have been working for the better part of two years to find a buyer while also searching for a new place that we could relocate to and build a different park. All of that came to a screeching halt in March and we shifted over to Plan B, sell everything and focus strictly on school and community based programming like what we do with Get On Board.
The property will be listed soon through a broker with the intention of working with a buyer or group that has interest in keeping some sort of recreation going on the site that includes at least a portion of the park operating. There is already an interested group that wants to develop some housing on the South side of Airfield Drive and use the proceeds to keep recreation going that might include a skatepark, soccer/basketball/volleyball, ice sheets and even a pool. Essentially a community center type approach.
IF you or someone you know would like to get involved with that project there will be a survey out soon to collect information from interested parties.
Our timeline of operating is as follows:
It’s pretty cut and dry for us, we need to preserve the base of our fund in order to meet our mission of providing opportunity for action sports enthusiasts.
We already know what our future will be. Our focus on school and community based programming will be expanded to include after school clubs plus the addition of mountain biking. We will be purchasing a few properties that we will use as retreats for students from schools that participate in our programs. These will be skills based retreats built around mountain biking, skateboarding and arts. Participants will get what we refer to as micro doses of skills from bike maintenance and woodworking to fundamentals of home economics. All retreats will be staffed by a steady rotation of teachers from the schools we work with and kept to groups of no more than six participants. It’s going to be hugely rewarding and have way more impact than the park itself.
With luck we will be able to expand the mission to include working with groups that want to create local parks in their communities, but first we want to make sure we are getting at least 25,000 participants a year active through our programming.
Thanks so much for all the support over the years, we aren’t going away, it will just be a different deal. The new foundation will be called First Push, it will be awesome stuff with awesome people.” – Beau
