Marple Skatepark Fund-raising target of £100,000 Reached!
This time last year I reported that Friends of the Park needed to raise another £22,394 to reach our funding target of £100,000 for the Skatepark Project.
I'm delighted to announce that this was achieved on Tuesday
20 December 2016, when we received a fabulous donation of £1,185 from
Marple and Goyt Valley Rotary Club during their final ever meeting at the Royal Hotel in Hayfield. The project has received brilliant support from
Marple and Goyt Valley Rotary over the last four years in return for the help we gave the club with their Christmas Collections in the Co-Op / Asda. This year Friends of the Park took over the collection completely and Asda customers generously donated a total of £1,876 during three days of collecting in the store last week.
Raising more than
£24,000 in a year (including other projects) is a record for Friends of the Park, by a considerable margin, and means we've now raised a total of
£50,000 for the skatepark within the local community that will be matched £ for £ by Stockport Council. There will be full details on the Friends of the Park web site but here are the highlights of this year's fund-raising successes:
£2,500 CDL Fund Grant Award via Forever Manchester.
£1,876 ASDA Christmas Collections 2016
£1,684 Local Events Carnival, Food and Drink, etc.
£1,500 Marple Area Committee Flexibility Fund Award (2016).
£1,200 Friends of Park Refurbishment of Town Centre benches.
£1,185 Marple & Goyt Valley Rotary
£1,120 SkateFest Music night at Hawk Green CC.
£1,003 #GiveMe5 + miscellaneous donations via Local Giving.
£1,000 Stockport Homes Grant.
£1,000 The Marple Website.
£992 Grow Your Tenner 2016 - matched donations via Local Giving.
£988 Grow Your Tenner 2015 - matched donations via Local Giving.
£941 Julian Wadden Treasure Hunt.
£901 Christmas Collections with Rotary 2015.
£856 Art Auction of donated paintings photos and books.
£600 Raised by Marple Hall School.
£500 Rotary Club of Stockport donations.
£420 Hatters and All Things Nice (2015).
£400 Local MP William Wragg's Charity of the Month.
£250 Tuesday Bridge Group donations.
£250 ASDA Chosen by You Community voting scheme in store.
£240 Marple Soup Community donations.
£224 KC Dowling commission on book sales.
£195 Miscellaneous small donations.
£158 Ring o' Bells Quiz Nights.
£150 Marple Carnival donation.
£100 Marple Bands donation.
£100 Nitrotek Business donation.
£100 Nationwide Community voting scheme in branch.
£132 Oldknow Bar donation and collection.
£100 Personal donation
£59 Easy Fundraising commission on Internet sales.
£50 Romiley and Marple Lions donation.
In anticipation of reaching the target this year we've met with the nominated contractor Canvas Spaces and the Council several times since August. There have been some issues with the impact of inflation on the 2014 tender prices and we have had to remove some scope and tweak the design to keep the project within our budget. We recently agreed a revised design that addresses this and have also agreed that Friends of the Park and the council will do some of the landscaping works.
The next key step is for the council to place an order with Canvas so that materials can be ordered and construction can begin. We are currently waiting for a final documentation package from Canvas before the order process can be concluded and should have more news of that early in the New Year.
There are some new issues that we'd like to address with the skatepark that are not covered by the current project, for example the old tarmac surface has recently developed pot holes in places around the existing ramps. We would like to find a long term solution to this if possible, and also find ways to improve the top section of the existing skatepark and the basketball area. So for the immediate future we will continue fund-raising in the hope that we can find a way to tackle these issues too.
Finally for now, on behalf of Friends of the Park and the Skatepark Team, I'd like to say a very big thank you to all the local people, local organisations, local businesses, local schools, local councillors and the council themselves, for supporting our efforts since we started this project 5 years ago, and having enough faith that we could do it to give us your money. We've had no grants from national organisations such as the Lottery or Sport England and
ALL THE MONEY for this project has been raised at a local level.
It's quite an amazing achievement really, so well done Marple - we've done it for ourselves!
