Ottawa Skateboard Community Association

The Ottawa Skateboard Community Association is a non-profit organization that works to lobby the City of Ottawa to build more skateboard parks that are efficiently designed.  Through hard work, the support of a community, and an organized plan, OSCA had our first success this past year, securing funding for a fully custom concrete permanent skateboard park in the McNabb Park at the corner of Gladstone and Bronson.

The McNabb park has allocated approximately 13,000 square feet of space for the skateboard park and $300,000 to build and design the skateboard park.  Given the budget, the skate park will not be able to fully utilize the space we have been allocated and the park will end up at around 7,000 square feet.  Our goal is to collect $200,000 through our program called "1 square foot".  We think every great challenge can be accomplished by tackling the issue in small pieces - or in our case, square feet.  Every $40 donation gives us one more square foot of Skate Park.

Skateboarding is one of the fastest growing recreational activities among youth, and a healthy activity that individuals can all enjoy regardless of social status, income, sex or any other characteristic.  The health and social benefits associated with regular participation in sports and physical activities are well recognized.  Nevertheless, activity studies consistently report that Canadians increasingly select sedentary leisure-time activities such as television viewing, video gaming, and personal computing.  Skateboard parks represent one outlet among many offered by community recreation centers that can address the growing problem of youth inactivity.

We have a one-time opportunity to help build and design Ottawa's only downtown skateboard park facility and ensure that the space offered to us will be fully used.  We hope fo find organizations willing to donate raw materials, landscaping and/or capital in order to increase the size of the skateboard park.  The designers, New Line Skate Parks, have given us a set of material specifications (rebar, concrete, and fill) that, if acquired through donation, will be used to expand the size of the park.

With the larger donations, there is an opportunity to have permanent signage within the park with one's name/business, story and/or involvement in this project.  If you are interested in helping out, please contact us to find out more information.  It is our hope that with your help we can ensure that the space at McNabb will be fully utilized for the youth of this city.