We have been working for the better part of two years to find a buyer while also searching for a new place that we could relocate to and build a different park. All of that came to a screeching halt in March and we shifted over to Plan B, sell everything and focus strictly on school and community based programming like what we do with Get On Board.
The property will be listed soon through a broker with the intention of working with a buyer or group that has interest in keeping some sort of recreation going on the site that includes at least a portion of the park operating. There is already an interested group that wants to develop some housing on the South side of Airfield Drive and use the proceeds to keep recreation going that might include a skatepark, soccer/basketball/volleyball, ice sheets and even a pool. Essentially a community center type approach.
IF you or someone you know would like to get involved with that project there will be a survey out soon to collect information from interested parties.
Our timeline of operating is as follows:
It’s pretty cut and dry for us, we need to preserve the base of our fund in order to meet our mission of providing opportunity for action sports enthusiasts.
We already know what our future will be. Our focus on school and community based programming will be expanded to include after school clubs plus the addition of mountain biking. We will be purchasing a few properties that we will use as retreats for students from schools that participate in our programs. These will be skills based retreats built around mountain biking, skateboarding and arts. Participants will get what we refer to as micro doses of skills from bike maintenance and woodworking to fundamentals of home economics. All retreats will be staffed by a steady rotation of teachers from the schools we work with and kept to groups of no more than six participants. It’s going to be hugely rewarding and have way more impact than the park itself.
With luck we will be able to expand the mission to include working with groups that want to create local parks in their communities, but first we want to make sure we are getting at least 25,000 participants a year active through our programming.
Thanks so much for all the support over the years, we aren’t going away, it will just be a different deal. The new foundation will be called First Push, it will be awesome stuff with awesome people."
Beau Lambert / Rye Airfield