Surprise announcement fills funding gap for new SLO County skate park

What was expected to be another contentious services district discussion with Cambria community members Thursday about a six-year effort to build a local skate-park turned instead into a lovefest.

It came after a startling announcement about the Skate Cambria Initiative by Dick Clark, a director and former president and treasurer of the nonprofit Cambria Community Council, which usually operates behind the scenes providing volunteer bus service for seniors and many grants for local causes, groups and projects.

Tears, a standing ovation and grateful comments followed the Clark’s statement to the Cambria Community Services District and a packed-house audience that the community-benefit fund once again would fill the skate park’s financial gap.

He said the council would provide $175,000 to fill the construction-bid gap between original, almost “back-of-the-envelope” estimates from contractors in April 2025 and the actual bids the CSD received last month from two contractors.

The social services organization also would hold in reserve an additional $206,000 as a contingency fund to cover expenses for emergencies and other expenses not directly related to construction efforts, Clark said.

CSD Director Michael Thomas defined those contingencies as “unknowns and unknowable” costs.

According to Karen Dean, the CSD board’s vice president, those expenses otherwise would have hit the district, not the contractor, whose bid includes a similar fund for building-cost shortfalls.

The park will go in on a now-vacant lot across from the Veterans Memorial Building at 1000 Main St., where a previous, rather ramshackle skate park had been until components became unsafe.

The facility was closed and dismantled in spring of 2020.

The skate park agreement still has to be drafted and finalized, presented to and approved by the CSD and community council boards, then subsequently sent to the CSD directors for a final vote and contract award to Newton Construction & Management, based on their low bid of $1.344 million.

According to District Counsel Tim Carmel, who estimated — “optimistically,” he said — that, if no more wrinkles show up in the process, the agreement could go to his board for that final vote in three to four weeks.

The apparent expectation of many in the crowd — based on wide-eyed comments many of them made after Clark’s comments — had been that the nonprofit Skate Cambria would have to step up again and fundraise yet again, as they’ve done several times in the past.

Their members have gone to that community well many times during the long saga that left local skate enthusiasts waiting endlessly for a safe place to enjoy their sport.

Skate Cambria has repeatedly fundraised not only for money toward much of the original project but to fill other funding gaps, most times when new county requirements were added, such as for a pricey public restroom.

Comments during the more-than-two-hour session were instead rave reviews and copious thanks and kudos to Clark, Skate Cambria’s project manager Juli Amodei and other participants and donors, various district directors who’d helped with fundraisers and donated personally, and to CSD staffers who’d balanced the project on the knife blade of often conflicting demands by the county and skate park supporters.

CSD directors ultimately voted unanimously to proceed with the process of ultimately awarding the contract and starting to build the project.

Kathe Tanner

The Tribune

805-781-7904 (voicemails only)

Kathe Tanner has been writing about the people and places of SLO County’s North Coast since 1981, first as a columnist and then also as a reporter. Her career has included stints as a bakery owner, public relations director, radio host, trail guide and jewelry designer. She has been a resident of Cambria for more than four decades, and if it’s happening in town, Kathe knows about it.