BY ADAM ATKINSON
North Country This Week

POTSDAM — Development of a skate park on Fall Island is still under consideration even though the proposal didn’t make the final cut of projects for the village’s Downtown Revitalization Initiative funding.

A working group led by the village’s planning and development director Frederick Hanss and international artist Matthew Mazzotta (originally from Canton) met to hash out strategies for funding the park on Tuesday, July 27.

Mazzotta and several others in an informal group had initially proposed the skate park idea for DRI funding, but the idea was not approved by the state.

However, Hanss said that the plan’s inclusion in the village’s initial submission to the DRI should help the skate park proposal score well with other state grant agencies in the future.

The working group is expected to develop the skate park further and begin researching ways to fund it.

In the original DRI submission the total cost of the Fall Island Skatepark and Outdoor Art Gallery proposal was estimated at around $337,800. The funding request through the DRI was $257,800.

According to the original DRI proposal:

“The Fall Island Skatepark and Outdoor Art Gallery reimagines the underused plaza area of Fall Island Park into a multi-use skatepark, sculpture park, walkway and seating area of the Riverwalk Trail. The park will create a new downtown attraction that will reinvigorate the plaza area and serve as a connector for foot traffic from Maple Street sidewalk to the north side of Fall Island and the proposed St Lawrence Whitewater park.”