Centralia follows through, submits funding request for skate park makeover

May 1-Roughly nine months after Twin Cities youth signed a petition to call attention to the crumbling Fuller's Twin City Skate Park, Centralia city staff have followed through on a promise to seek state funding to restore it to its former glory.

Centralia Parks Director and Deputy City Manager Amy Buckler briefed the Centralia City Council on the city's application for a $995,000 youth athletic facilities grant from the Washington state Recreation and Conservation Office during a Tuesday night council meeting. The grant funds would contribute to covering a total expected price tag of roughly $1.125 million.

The city has to match at least 10% of the grant funds. According to Buckler, the Centralia Rotary Foundation has pledged $80,000 to the project to go toward the matching requirement, with the request that it includes renovating the nearby park bathrooms in Rotary Riverside Park.

The park, which neighbors Fuller's Twin City Skate Park, was originally founded and maintained by Centralia Rotary before being donated to the city in 1983.

"This is Rotary Riverside Park," Buckler said. "They have a stake in this park. They are wonderful, wonderful partners. They're very interested in the restroom renovation. I want to thank them profusely."

The city expects it will also need to cough up $50,000 from its own parks improvement fund to provide the last of the matching funds.

During the meeting, Buckler stated she and her team planned to submit the city's grant application shortly and ahead of the application deadline on Thursday, April 30.

Buckler's presentation gave the public its first glimpses of concept drawings for the park included in the grant application. The concepts show a transformed skate park with a small covered half pipe and an all new layout.

According to Buckler, the new ramp features are meant to be accessible for all ages and skill levels and include features optimized for skaters with disabilities, including those coming to the park in a wheelchair.

The city plans to go with a different type of ramp for most of the new features. The covered half pipe, which will be better protected from the weather, will be similar to the current ramps, using a dense paper product called skatelite. The rest of the ramps would be galvanized steel ramps with a powder coating on top. The current skatelite ramps have proven too costly for the city to maintain.

"It's actually a lot to maintain with having to replace that Skatelite every three to five years as it needs to be replaced," Buckler said. "I can't recommend that for the city, because I don't think it's going to be realistic for us to keep up with."

Beyond the ramps, the city plans to use the money to improve the restrooms, as previously stated, which includes repairing the roof and renovating the interior.

The city will also fill cracks in the concrete slab of the skate park and repair the lights around the park.

According to Buckler, renovating the crumbling skate park has been on the city's to-do list since being included in its 2024 parks plan, which establishes a "20-year vision" for the city's parks. The current effort to renovate the park, however, was spurred into action by a petition from local youths and community members that began circulating last summer and gathered as many as 400 signatures.

Since then, city staff have reached out to the local skateboarding community, starting with a meeting at the park in October of last year. This year, the city hosted a "skaters open house" to brainstorm ideas for new ramps and later held a parks board meeting with local stakeholders.

It's now a waiting game for additional news on the park. The Recreation and Conservation Office will complete grant scoring sometime in October ahead of the state's 2027 legislative session. From there, funding will depend on if the Legislature picks up the project. According to Buckler, The project will have the best chance of receiving funding if it's scored among the top 20 grants.

If the city is awarded the $955,000 in grant funding from the state, it will enter into a contract with the state in the summer of 2027 and complete all required studies and acquire all necessary permits at the end of that year. If all goes according to plan, the city would be able to break ground on the new project in the summer of 2028.

For information about the history of Fuller's Twin City Skate Park, visit https://tinyurl.com/3v6bn85k. For previous reporting about the current effort to renovate the skate park, visit https://tinyurl.com/htkhe6cf.

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This story was originally published May 2, 2026 at 11:18 AM.