Construction progress during August (below) at the new skate and BMX park, with workers even putting down the horseshoe bowl under cover during wet weather. Photo via City of Bayswater.

FOLLOWING extensive consultation and several committee discussions the new City of Bayswater skate park will be named “The City of Bayswater Skate Park”.

The new park is at Wotton Reserve and is partly made up of features moved from the old skate and BMX park on the other side of the reserve, which had to be demolished to make way for Metronet upgrades.

The old one was technically called “Wotton Reserve Skate and BMX Facility” but in the many months of consulting users about the replacement, it turns out no one actually calls it that and “Baysie” or “Bayswater Skate Park” is the far more common usage. 

Council staff penned an eight page report mulling over options for the new name, researching skate parks in nine other localities and finding “the most common theme appears to be that a Skate Park is named after the area it is located”.  

They wrote that during the long consultation over the form of the skate park, most people seemed to prefer the name “Baysie Skate Park” over “Bayswater” and recommended that informal moniker.

But the members of the council’s skate advisory committee didn’t like the diminutive Baysie and recommended the full and formal “Bayswater”, and the full council agreed that given the park’s regional significance it deserved to have the name spelt in full.

The park’s on track to be finished in September, providing the weather stays manageable, but so far the dedicated workers have managed to keep building under temporary cover even during recent rains.

by DAVID BELL