Claremore skateboarders who have long wanted their own skate park won’t have to wait much longer, according to City of Claremore Assistant City Manager Matt Mueller.

At the next City Council meeting July 21, bids for the skate park construction will be presented to Council members for approval — following which, work on the long-discussed park will begin in earnest.

“Things are still on track for the skate park to be ready by late summer or early fall at the latest,” Mueller said. “In June, we sent out RFPs (Requests For Proposal) and received several responses back, both for bids for the skate park components and the (concrete) base construction, the bids for which came in under what we’d budgeted for it, so we were quite pleased with that.”

Low bids to be presented to Council are those of American Ramp Company of Joplin, Mo., for the skate park’s components, and Ira M. Green Construction of Claremore, for construction of the park’s 7,000 square-foot concrete pad, on which components will be added.

“Pending Council approval of the low bids, we plan to have another meeting with the skateboarding community to discuss the kind of (skate park) layout and design they would want,” he said. “At one of our previous meetings with them, they communicated they were wanting a park consisting of 75 percent street, 25 percent ramp, which we’ve drawn up some preliminary examples to show them.

“As we’ve always said, this is the skateboarders park and we’re wanting them to be involved in its ultimate design,” he said. “We’re going to be showing them some possible blueprints for the skate park and see what they like, what they don’t like, what might be missing, etc.”

Following the meeting with skateboarders, Mueller said the skate park design should be finalized.

“Once the specific components are selected and ordered, there will probably be 30 to 45 days before the park is ready for skateboarders,” he said. “We’ve done some preliminary engineering and will still need to relocate the walking track, but I definitely think a late summer/early fall time frame for the skate park is a realistic projection.”

The City of Claremore has allocated $150,000 toward construction of the skate park from the Parks and Recreations budget.

The park will be adjacent to but detached from the Claremore Recreation Center, and be a free but fenced facility, open to the public from dawn to dusk.