Tosa SkateBoarders United (TSU)
Non-Profit 501 (c) 3 Corp.
OUR STATUS WAS GRANTED MARCH 13, 2006!
Events See our Calendar of events at our new Web site
We are on our way to building a skate park in the Village of Wauwatosa at Hart Park, we are in our fourth year of this endeavor.
Tosa Skateboarders United (TSU) is a group of community volunteers in Wauwatosa, WI who want to see a public skateboard park built in our area. The state currently has almost 40 facilities of this type, some of which are in very small northern and/or rural towns, but there are no (legal) public places for skaters in this major metropolitan area, especially in our own community. It is sad to see kids in trouble every day because their “sport” is not traditional. They need an appropriate place nearby to skate without damaging public and private property.
The Wauwatosa Police Department, along with the Wauwatosa Recreation Department and Wauwatosa Youth Commission, decided to hold a public forum in early 2004 to see if there was enough interest to put together a group. There was a strong showing and a small, but strong, group of us have banded together with the goal in mind of building a park within the next 2 years. At the first design meeting many of the involved skaters decided on specific skate park elements that would really cater to their needs for all skill levels. We are now in the process of obtaining initial bids for the cost of the project. Our major challenge will be raising the funds needed to make this dream for many people become a reality. TSU will have to raise all of the money on our own because our county government is tapped out due to years of budget crisis. This is the primary reason for TSU applying for 501(c)(3) status as a Non-Profit & Tax Deductible Organization. We want to be able to offer tax deductible donation receipts and hopefully apply for grants from children’s organizations and skate industry corporations to help with our funding.
The TSU meetings are usually the last Monday of every month in the Civic Center 7765 W. North Ave, on the corner of North & Wauwatosa Ave. We meet in the Auditorium at Wauwatosa’s City Hall, 6:30pm. Please come join us if you like. We are moving along and have been trying a few community awareness and fundraising events to get our feet wet.
Although it is a brief history, we Thank You for taking interest in our organization. If you would like any more information or would like to make a donation, please feel free to contact us. We appreciate any ideas you may also have to share with us, we need all the help we can get.
Update: WE ARE A 501(c)(3)! OUR STATUS WAS GRANTED MARCH 13, 2006!
With many thanks, Mary Martinez, Kathy Berry, Steve Birney, Doug Braun, Ron Grimm, Valorie Schleicher and the students of TSU
May 20, 2005 Milwaukee Journal
February 12th 2004 Milwaukee Journal
May 20, 2005 Milwaukee Journal
Wauwatosa - Travel around the country in search of outdoor skateboard parks, and here's what you're likely to see: sterile expanses of prefab concrete ramps and bowls plopped on any open site with little connection to the space around them.
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Photo/Gary Porter Fine arts students Aubris Taylor (left), 21, Cassandra Smith, 22, and Daniel Van Housen, 22, with a model of a proposed Wauwatosa skateboard park. |
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Quotable |
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- Daniel Van Housen, |
That's fine with most boarders. It beats getting run off the schoolyard or, worse, ticketed for riding along your own city streets.
Now a trio of Milwaukee fine arts students, working with a Wauwatosa skateboard group, are designing a new kind of skate park - an intimate complex of concrete paths and stairs amid islands of green space - a vision they say draws on the tenets of public art and famed landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted.
"We wanted it to look like a plaza," said 22-year-old Daniel Van Housen, one of three Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design students working with Tosa Skateboarders United to design a skating venue they hope to see built in Wauwatosa's expanded Hart Park.
"The kind of place that, if you walked up on it and knew nothing about skateboarding, you wouldn't know that's what it was," he said.
The concept appears to have resonated with the city's Parks and Forestry Commission, a committee of citizens appointed by the mayor. The group got a look at a preliminary model this week.
"I love this plaza idea," commissioner Jill Gaertner said after the presentation. "I can't wait to see this happen."
Tosa Skateboarders United is among a number of grassroots groups formed in southeastern Wisconsin in recent years to build public skate parks in their communities. Several have succeeded, with parks of varying sizes and styles drawing crowds in such locales as Cedarburg, Brookfield, West Bend and Delafield.
The Wauwatosa group, which has drawn supporters from all over the Milwaukee area, got started early last year after the Wauwatosa Youth Commission hosted public meeting to gauge interest in a local skate park.
Wauwatosa artist Val Schleicher, who has come to see skateboarding more as art than sport, put them in touch with MIAD sculpture professor Jill Sebastian. Three of Sebastian's public art students signed on, including Van Housen.
Each brought a slightly different perspective to the project. Sculpture majors Cassandra Smith, 22, and Aubris Taylor, 21, were interested in incorporating green space. Taylor saw the park in terms of functionality, in keeping with her interest in industrial design.
It was a bit more personal for Van Housen, of Saukville, who has been skateboarding since he was 15.
"This is something you draw in your notebook in middle school," said Van Housen. "To be able to make this model as an adult is pretty fun."
Though the students created the design, it was the boarders who inspired the vision.
"We wanted to keep the trees in there, the grass . . . to work with what's there instead of clear-cutting," said 24-year-old Milwaukee boarder Mike Roebke, who has helped build skate parks in about 10 cities across the country.
At the same time, he said, it needed to skate like a city street, "like if you went downtown, but legal."
The result, at least so far, is a series of interconnected "skate spots," some modeled after well-known venues in such places as Philadelphia and San Francisco. Instead of prefab ramps, there are steps and ledges, tree planters and handrails - all the structures that draw boarders to the urban spaces from which they're banned.
Interspersed throughout are oases of green with trees and other plantings, and room for picnic tables and benches for those who'd just like to watch.
The three still hope to add a bowl, but engineers must determine whether that's feasible.
The students' concept is at the forefront of skateboard park design, as evidenced by the Vancouver Skate Plaza that debuted last fall and the new DC Skate Park in Ohio set to open next month.
The review by the parks board is just the beginning. At the very least, it would need the blessing of both the Common Council and Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District.
And then there's the money, which Tosa Skateboarders United has vowed to raise.
The group could be at looking to raise at least a quarter-million dollars, said Schleicher.
So far, the group has pulled in nearly $3,000, and it's awaiting its non-profit designation so it can kick off a major fund-raising campaign.
In the meantime, members are pitching the project as important for the
community.
From the May 20, 2005, editions of the Milwaukee
Journal Sentinel
Tosa Skate Boarders United Keep Rolling Along
Tosa Skateboarders United (TSU) has taken another step forward on their way to building a Skate Park in Tosa. They have partnered with Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design (MIAD) to build a 3D mock up of the park.
Since the park is a public space within our community it is a clear fit to have community involvement. The students from MIAD’s Public Art Class under the eye of their professor, a National renowned Sculptor and Public Artist Jill Sebastian, took on the project as part of their studies on building Public Art in public spaces. The students took into consideration the feedback from focus groups of skateboarders held by TSU last year, what was feasible and what was not.
Photo Opportunity
The 3D mock up will be available for viewing at the next TSU meeting at Monday May 25th at 6:30 pm at the Civic Center at Wauwatosa’s City Hall. Another viewing will be at the Westside Art walk on April 30th, at 1:30 p.m. Located at the east end of the Chancery Parking lot on State Street in the Village, from 12-3 p.m. TSU will have their ramps skateboards to educate and perform for the community.
On Tuesday May 17th the model will travel to Hart Park when TSU will make a presentation to the Parks and Forestry department a division of Wauwatosa’s Public works department headed by Bill Kappel.
April 20th, Kathy Berry & a MIAD alumni Valorie Schleicher of TSU, stopped at MIAD to see the models progress and meet the three MIAD artists working on the project. The model is being done in a plastine clay and was nearing completion The MIAD students took into consideration the wishes of the skaters, and built a plaza like setting, similar to 7th Pier & Love Park.
It is a very impressive open space that takes on the air of Frederick Law Olmsted’s open landscape architecture, said artist and Tosa resident Valorie Schleicher. Olmstead works include the US Capitol, in Washington, Central Park in NY. His philosophy was the “more aesthetically pleasing you make a city, the more people will want to live in that city, and the happier they will be.
Olmstead, is “One of the greatest champions of the City Beautiful movement was Frederick law Olmsted. Olmsted was the leading landscape architect of the post-Civil War generation, and has long been acknowledged as the founder of American landscape architecture.” Quoted from Olmstead website.
Anyone wishing to attend is the TSU meetings are welcome, they meet monthly on the third Monday of the month at the civic center. It is a great way to show your support and give TSU feedback on the purposed park. Or stop by the web discussion group at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TosaSkateBoarders.
Donations for the Skate Park can be made to Wauwatosa Savings Bank 7700 W. State Street, Wauwatosa Wi. c/o Tosa Skate Boarders United, TSU is a non-profit organization.
February 12th 2004 Milwaukee Journal
Wauwatosa - If Wednesday's turnout at City Hall is any indication, Wauwatosa could be the latest suburban Milwaukee community to consider building an outdoor skateboard park.
About 80 young people and adults filled the civic center auditorium to voice support for a skateboarding, in-line skating and BMX venue - and to volunteer their services to the Wauwatosa Youth Commission, which is spearheading the effort.
The next step, said commission members, is to begin research on a number of fronts, including potential sites, funding and design, and bring that information back to Wauwatosa's elected officials.
"Money is the main issue," said Steve Birney, a Wauwatosa Recreation Department employee and commission member who estimated area parks have cost between $30,000 to nearly $300,000.
"These are tough budget times," said Wauwatosa police Officer Doug Braun, who sits on the commission as the department's unofficial "skateboarder liaison."
"I don't see the city putting money into something like this when it's cutting police and firefighters."
In recent years, skateboard parks have sprouted in communities from Racine to Port Washington and west to Delafield with the boom in skateboarding and other extreme sports.
In November, Brookfield unveiled the largest so far - a 14,000-square-foot, $250,000 concrete course built by a grass-roots organization with a $200,000 contribution from the city.
Oak Creek appears poised to become the first Milwaukee County community to build a park. An ad hoc committee there now hopes to raise $90,000 after the Oak Creek-Franklin School Board voted Monday to allow a skateboard park on the grounds of East Middle School, 9330 S. Shepard Ave.
Several Wauwatosa sites were offered as possibilities Wednesday, including Hart Park along W. State St. and county-owned Hoyt and Madison parks, where swimming pools recently closed.
As in most communities, Wauwatosa skateboarders are limited in where they can pursue their sport. State law prohibits skateboards on public streets. And they're banned from school yards and most private property.
Commission members projected it could take three years to build a park, and boarders urged them to explore temporary options so they have a place to go before then.
"I'm tired of being driven out and harassed . . . whenever I go downtown," said 17-year-old Nick Kroll, a Wauwatosa West student.
Kroll said he'll jockey for a seat on the Wauwatosa group's design committee in the hopes of incorporating urban streetscape elements into any park that's built there.
From the Feb. 12, 2004 editions of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Visit us and see our Progress at
http://groups/yahoo.com/group/TosaSkateBoarders
414-771-8541
This
is something you draw in your notebook in middle school. To be able to make
this model as an adult is pretty fun. 