Alice Springs’ Newland skate park designs revealed

Plans for the Territory’s newest skate park, with a multi-million dollar price tag, have been revealed with an ambitious build timeline of mid next year. Check them ou.

Alice Springs’ mayor Matt Paterson has revealed the town’s new regional skate park could be opened by mid-2024 as concept plans are released.

Council released the concept plans for the Newland skate park, which includes an 1800sq m skate park, a half court, fitness area, a playground, toilet block and a dog park.

“It’s a pretty amazing park and I think it’s going to be a game changer for Alice Springs,” Mr Paterson said.

“We know as a council that our amenities are subpar and we’ve invested a lot of money the past two years to upgrade them, we’ve done two park upgrades last year, 13 shades, and now Newland (skate park).”

Concepts plans of the new multimillion dollar skate park to be built at Newland Park in Alice Springs. Picture: Alice Springs Town Council.

Mr Paterson has been a vocal advocate for the new facility in Alice Springs since 2018, saying the town “deserved” the new amenity.

However, he said the “world-class facility” was going to come at a “substantial” cost.

He said council had made a formal request to the Territory and federal governments for funding for the project, which would compliment its $1.8m contribution.

“We know that out of the $20m for youth infrastructure in the federal government commitment, there’s $4m sitting there, and hopefully we can tap into some of that,” he said.

He said the “best possible” outcome would see the park opened by July or August 2023.

“The design has been driven by the community, by a professional company, so it’s pretty exciting,” he said.

He said the park would not be closed at night or fenced off to prevent vandalism.

“That was something that came out (of consultation) that people liked the openness of Newland,” he said.

“I’ve said this many times, there’s 99 per cent of people in Alice Springs doing the right thing and they deserve nice things as well and we can’t not invest into the future because of some people doing the wrongs things.”

Mr Paterson has been a vocal supporter of a new skate park in Alice Springs since 2018. Photo: EMMA MURRAY

He hoped a council initiative to give away free trees would prevent the stealing that occurred about 10 years ago when Newland park was last upgraded.

“They (people stealing the trees) put them (the trees) in their backyard, that’s what we were finding,” he said.

“Newland park had 200 trees, after day one it had 150, after day two it had 100 and after a week it had about three that were kicked over, hence why we now give them away.”

Alice Springs Town Council director technical services Joel Andrew said the concept design took into consideration the thoughts and views of community members taken from three separate consultations in 2022.

“A high-level concept is now being developed and that will soon be open to community consultation, where we want to hear from all residents,” he said.