Turning back the clock a little bit to the end of July, I want to take the post today to talk about Skatetown.org buying a sport court from the Rose City Rollers down in Portland, OR. What is a sport court you ask? A sport court is a tiled based floor system typically used as a temporary floor in sportsplex and inline hockey focused facilities. They are also popular with roller derby because they can be moved between practice space and venues.
We made the decision to move forward with this after we had participated in the auction at CK schools and won the gym floor. The two floors serve different purposes and the reality is we need to work concurrently on both a short term and long term plan. At this stage of Skatetowns development and we felt it was the right decision given the budget headroom we had to pursue both simultaneously (at the time it felt crazy as well). There are a few clear questions we need to work towards solving and a sport court opened doors to accomplish these goals.
- Where do teams practice today and over the next year?
- How do we continue to keep the general public skating in Kitsap County while we work toward a long term community skating facility?
- How do we support youth and school organizations with fundraisers for the 2019/2020 school year?
The CK floor is a great option for a permanent facility but the reality is that we will be working on that project for a minimum of a year (longer if it’s a full construction/build project) given we don’t have a current site selected. The Sport Court allow us to do events in parking lots, over VCT, carpet, rough cement, etc. This means we can seriously explore short term vacant retail spaces for lease which we are in the process of doing.
There were several moving parts to this acquisition and like with most everything there is a level of horse trading involved. At the end of the day Skatetown still got the deal of a lifetime from the Rose City Rollers but were unable to work a trade that would have made it effectively free (but we tried). At the end of the day we paid 10% – %15 of the used value of the floor given its condition and it works out to a little more if you include the trailer we acquired to transport it around to events (haul from Portland). If you want to know actual numbers you will need to wait to read the official financial report early September (including budget breakdowns).
What does this mean for you the public that just wants to skate? Most importantly we really can go into short term contracts with vacant space this year with very little concern about damaging the existing facility or worrying about the skate surface. Doing weekend (or longer) skate events and fundraisers are on the table in parks, parking garages/lots, outdoors, or other venues thanks to this investment. We still need to check off a handful of logistical and business requirements before this happens (insurance, music licensing, are venue lease negotiations are all fun times being had currently), but things are moving forward. Again a huge thanks to Rose City for helping us out here and hope to see Kitsap skating soon!
