The Optimist Club of Mornington is hoping to raise as much as $250,000 for the construction of an All Wheels Park at the Perth East Recreation Complex in Milverton.
To give local cyclists, skateboarders, scooter riders and other young people a place to play and hang out, the Optimist Club of Mornington is hoping to raise $250,000 for the construction of an All Wheels Park at the Perth East Recreation Complex in Milverton.
Having recently secured a 40 by 60 foot piece of land at the edge of the recreation complex parking lot near the baseball diamonds as well as $20,000 in start-up funding from Perth East council, the local Optimist Club’s All Wheels Park committee is hoping to raise enough money to build the park on a concrete pad, along with benches, lighting and fences, ideally by some point next summer.
“It comes back to the fact that there’s lots for young youth, but there’s not that much for intermediate youth,” said Mark Mueller who, along with his wife, Evelyn Mueller, and four boys, helped initiate this project by writing a letter to the Optimists asking them to consider taking it on. “So the idea is to have somewhere kids can go and gather and play. They don’t always want to go to parks. At some point that’s not fun anymore and if they’re going to loiter somewhere, they might as well go somewhere they can loiter.”
“We always sometimes drive to Stratford just to go scootering on the skate park, so we want one closer to us,” added Max Mueller, one of Mark and Evelyn’s sons.
Since getting permission to build on the land from council, the committee has been busy raising money through all sorts of fundraiser events and initiatives from the sale of pretzel dogs — all-beef wieners baked in a pretzel dough — and Milverton All Wheels Park hats and t-shirts to hosting events like the recent Dusty Nostril gravel bike rally and the upcoming Roll-a-thon on Sept. 17 at the recreation complex pavilion.
For the Roll-a-thon, participants are able to collect pledges and commit to rollerblading, roller skating, biking, scootering or skateboarding a certain distance on the nearby paved trails, or complete a scavenger hunt around Milverton. The Perth County OPP will also be on hand at the recreation complex Sept. 17 to run a bike-safety rodeo.
The committee has also secured $10,000 from the Milverton Lions Club and $4,000 in grant funding through the Stratford Perth Community Foundation.
Once the majority of the funding needed to construct the All Wheel Parks has been secured, Mark Mueller said the committee will meet with a skate-park contractor that has already been consulted to design an All Wheels Park that makes best use of the space and can be built with the funds raised.
“If we do really good at fundraising then we can do more with the space, so we’re kind of leaving it a bit open ended,” Mark Mueller said.
For more information on the All Wheels Park project or the upcoming Roll-a-thon and to find out how to purchase Milverton All Wheels Park hats and t-shirts, visit the Optimist Club of Mornington Facebook page or call committee member Tricia Holmes Storey at 519-584-5603.