By:Anthony Rifilato
The town passed a resolution at last week's board meeting rescinding the park's fees, effective immediately. "The kids who use it really enjoy it," said Town of Hempstead spokeswoman Susie Trenkle. "[The town] wants to make sure more residents enjoy it."
The town will continue promoting the park as the warmer weather nears, and officials hope more skateboarders will gravitate toward the park now that it's free. "Now we have the spring coming up, and we want to make sure people know about it," said Trenkle.
When it first opened in 2002, Baldwin Skate Park was greeted with great fanfare and was meant to be a safe place for kids to skateboard. But membership, which peaked at 2,500 when it first opened, fell to below 500 last year.
Trenkle said the town's decision to eliminate fees was not based on any criticism or complaints about the park's costs. She said that while the $3 entrance fees will be rescinded, anyone who wants to use the park will have to show an i.d. card, though there will no longer be a $10 fee for the cards.
The town attributed the drop in attendance to a number of factors, ranging from months of bad weather, which kept the park closed at times, to the novelty of the park wearing off. "With any type of place, when it starts there's a big influx of people," Trenkle said. "It ebbs and flows."
Even Harbor Skate, the pre-eminent skate shop in Baldwin, was hurt by the bad weather last year. In January the store, which opened on Milburn Avenue in 2002, closed its doors, although the store is reopening this month on Sunrise Highway in Rockville Centre.
Although Harbor Skate and the skate park seemed to have an obvious symbiosis, with Harbor Skate providing the boards to many kids who were interested in using the park, co-owner Rob Cuccio said the store's decision to move wasn't based on the park's declining membership, but rather was an attempt to reach more customers in a new, more accessible location.
Cuccio said that eliminating entrance fees is a good idea, and that Harbor Skate still hopes to service Baldwin's skaters. "I think it's a great idea," he said. "That's how it should be. I think Baldwin has a pretty big skateboarding community."
Cuccio said he believes that attendance at the park dropped due to the fees, weather and number of restrictions at the park that kids would often complain about when coming into his store, such as not being able to perform certain tricks.
He also said that while paying $3 to get in the park isn't a big deal for most people, for kids who want to go to the park and simply skate, relying on their parents to give them money every time they want to ride their boards can quickly dampen their enthusiasm, and kids will opt to simply skate around their neighborhoods.
"I think it was because of the fees and non-skaters running it," he said.
