Could Oasis be home to new skate park? (From Swindon Advertiser)

Could Oasis be home to new skate park?

9:20pm Sunday 12th February 2012 in News

Liam Bennett, left, and Darren Gough

A LONG-RUNNING campaign to secure a skate park might have found its answer at the revamped Oasis Leisure Centre.

Organisers behind a push for a venue in Swindon had been lobbying the council for 10 years for somewhere for young people to go.

Moirai Capital Invest-ments, which will carry out the £65m revamp, confirmed it was involved in ‘promising’ talks with the group.

Keith Leahy, organiser of Swindon Needs a Proper Skate Park (SNAPS) said: “It sounds perfect.

“We wanted to know if we were going to be covered in that site somewhere and the answer is a good ‘yes’.

“We’ll sit down with them in March because there are obviously issues about space and where the park will be built, but it’s great news as far as we’re concerned.”

The community-led project had been calling for a ‘concrete paradise’ to become part of the development, which will include a hotel, indoor arena and water park.

The campaign received the backing of superstar DJ Fatboy Slim when he performed at the Oasis in December.

Mr Leahy said: “A lot of people have been campaigning for the skate park, it has gone on for 10 years and there were other groups before we came along.

“But I think we were in the right place at the right time. It’s an absolutely terrific result.”

Mr Leahy said a fundraiser held at the County Ground last month showed the wide mix of people who had supported the park. “It wasn’t a load of hoodie-wearing skateboarders, there were grandmothers, grandfathers, dads, mums, young and old, girls and boys,” he said.

“The skate park will give young people a place to socialise and express their culture. It will be a hub of good things.”

Peter Holmes, property consultant for Moirai, said: “SNAPS have approached us with a proposition which looks very promising and have been in dialogue with one of my colleagues.

“We don't want to say this is a fait accompli as we will have to wait for the council to decide that it agrees to the leasing of the land and so on and so forth.

“Once that happens, we hope that things should start moving and it should be very exciting.”

SNAPS had envisaged a ‘free-to-ride concrete paradise’ based on a railway theme, with rails for ‘grinding’, a platform and sleepers.

Young people have been travelling to other towns because they say the facilities in Swindon are not up to scratch.