“This means everything to us”: skate community react to plans for urban sports area in Pier Gardens

If you’re not in the know, they’re all obstacles in urban sports, like skateboarding or BMXing. We’ve all seen brilliant skateboarding at the Olympics in recent years, and now an exciting new park for urban sports is well underway for being designed as part of the Pier Gardens renovations.

International skatepark designers, Betongpark Ltd, have been working with local sports groups to design an area where people on wheels of all sorts can spend time perfecting jumps and tricks.

Originally identified as something people wanted to see in the Cleethorpes Masterplan, adopted in 2022, the plan is to create an area at the northern end of Pier Gardens, towards the Pier and new Sea Road building, just near where the new retaining wall is being built.

The area will contain lots of trees and bushes to create a park that fits with the landscape of the rest of the gardens. 16 additional trees are also being planted in the area, alongside wild flowers.

Betongpark have designed skate parks in the UK, from inner city London to places like Devon and Jedburgh, as well as internationally, particularly in Norway.

Stuart Maclure, Development Manager from Betongpark, said: “We’ve really enjoyed creating this for the people of Cleethorpes. The best bit has been working with the skate community to understand what they wanted and designing something that fits with those aspirations.”

The skate community were invited to see the 3D designs for the skate park yesterday to be able to give their feedback and thoughts.

Harry Richardson, a key skater who lives in North East Lincolnshire, said: “This means everything to us. I’ve been skating for over 10 years and there has been people fighting for this all that time.”

He added: “I think the simplicity of this design is what is so great though. For myself and others already skating, we can just hop on a train and go to another city to skate, but for those people starting out locally, this is perfect.

“I also think people will travel to come and see it, the whole thing will just be unbelievable. The plans themselves look great. It seems very user friendly, which is exactly what we wanted.”

Cllr Hayden Dawkins, Cabinet member for tourism and leisure, said: “This is a brilliant idea – by having this, it’s yet another attraction to Cleethorpes for a new community. We want to make sure that Pier Gardens are well used once they’ve been re-modelled, and this is a great way of making that happen.”

The proposals will now be taken forward to full design stage and fully costed up.

The build will be part of the overall Government funded works to remodel Pier Gardens, alongside the building of the Sea Road building, and the changes to Market Place in Cleethorpes, both of which will start in the new year.