Pushing on: Rhinelander skaters, community work together for skate park

RHINELANDER – The creation of a Rhinelander skate park is another step closer to reality. Design plans for the project were unveiled Thursday, Dec. 5 during a presentation at ArtStart.

It was Dec. 2021 when a group of young skateboard enthusiasts asked the city of Rhinelander to create more inclusive spaces – especially for at-risk youth. Many of the youth who spoke at the city council meeting back then and were at the design presentation last week, belong to OverIt, an organization for Rhinelander area teens. Their interest in a meeting space for kids who maybe don’t fit a particular mold was renewed then following the death of a friend and fellow member of the group.

 “I don’t think any of us knew what this would look like, but we were kind of just coming face to face with a disconnect in our community and facing problems that affected all of us and clearly people beyond just us in our group, and I think we just reached a limit where we didn’t have any other choice but to speak up, and we knew we needed to reach out,” Anthony Gaudioso, OverIt President said.

“This whole project would never have happened without the idea that came from the original group, Stephen Moren, Ava Kurilla and Jaden Roberts, and unfortunately, the project gained attention and became a serious thing when we lost our friend Stephen,” Gaudioso added.

Hunger Skateparks in Indiana was awarded the engineering and design bid, funded by a $75,000.00 earmark by the city council. Co-owners Bart Smith and Christy Wiesenhahn have worked with OverIt, ArtStart, area artists and a steering committee to create a skate park that would be a place for youth to gather and hang out, but also be of interest to the general public.

They presented their initial plans to a group of more than 40 skaters, city council members and interested community members.

“Thanks for having us, what a cool community,” Smith said. “We love your enthusiasm and think it’s amazing.”

The preliminary plans offered a couple of theme options, a mythical forest or a lighthouse beacon. The forest option, with elements that include subtle nods to the Hodag, forests and green space, had overwhelming support among the group.

“The Hodag is everywhere,” Wiesenhahn said. “It really came through as important, so we dug a little deeper and thought about your woods and what kind of woods do these creatures come from. We’re from a wooded area in Indiana, so I get it; the idea of the cabin and the movements you can’t account for. So we thought that the mythical forest idea was a good place to start.”

The designs were opened up to discussion, with suggestions from attendees. City alder Carrie Mikalauski said as a non-skater, she wanted the park to be representative of the community as a whole.

“Something that everyone can be a part of, so the very beginning, intermediate and some more difficult things – what those are, I have no idea, but that’s the idea we were hoping for,” Mikalauski said. “But I think it’s beautiful the way that it is.”

The plight of OverIt to help fight mental illness, loneliness and social isolation was taken up as a community development project that incorporated art as a way of coping.

In furthering the cause, Rhinelander was one of 18 cities nationwide chosen to participate in the One Nation One Project arts and health initiative in 2023; the skate park was selected as the city’s big project.

Though the ONOP project unveiling was July 27 – before any structural work for a skate park was done, the steering committee invited the community to participate in “A Push Against Loneliness” event that included a March Against Social Isolation, a skate jam, music and other events.

Gaudioso agreed that isolation is a concern among all age groups and said he thinks the skate park is a good thing, not just for skaters, but for the entire community.

“There’s a lot of isolation that happens in rural towns just like Rhinelander, and there’s a very tight knit community here, but [other towns] don’t always have these safe spaces and these mediums to connect with each other, and I think when you don’t have those, you see a lot of people face mental health issues, communication issues. We don’t always get the connection in our community that we want to see,” he said. “But we just keep pushing on.”

After input from the community, a design will be finalized, and then fundraising will begin. It’s anticipated the cost for the skate park will be upwards of $1 million dollars.