Recently, Habersham County resident and area businesswoman Celena Iam presented the idea of a skateboard park to the Helen City Commission.
During that meeting, attended by Iam and her daughter Lydia, Iam asked the commission to consider creating a skate park to serve not only the local community, but tourists who visit.
“Lydia is 17 and she’s starting to spend a lot of time in Helen skateboarding,” Iam said.
Iam said Helen Police Department has worked with skateboarders to help ensure their safety, making her believe the city is a good place for skateboarders of all ages and a supporting business.
“I, being a serial entrepreneur, see an opportunity for a skateboard shop here in town, but part of my due diligence in starting any business is making sure that the governing body of the community has interest in my type product,” Iam said. “The overall vision for starting a skate shop is to bring in that skateboarding community, those generational layers of children who are engaging in this activity and give them appropriate direction and freedom of self-expression, respect for self, respect for others and as an active part of the community in clean-up days and things of that nature, rather than just kind of letting it go wherever it goes.”
Iam said the nearest skate park is in Gainesville. Cornelia also has one located behind the Cornelia-Habersham County Library.
Mayor Steve Fowler told Iam he agrees Lydia and the generation behind her are the future of the Helen area.
Iam said skateboarders are respectful and look out for each other’s safety when in Helen.
“We do tend to deal with a lot of teenagers, especially during the summer,” said Helen Police Chief Brian Stephens. “One thing that we notice is that nine out of 10 of the teenagers that we deal with are very respectful, very well-mannered and we encourage that. We encourage the teenagers to talk to the police – to approach us.”
Iam told Stephens it was the positive interaction between youth and Helen police that led her to explore locating a business in Helen.
She said the skateboarding community knows to follow the rules and to look out for each other and younger would-be boarders.
“They all know the rules and they share the rules that they have to stay off the sidewalks with their boards,” Iam said.
Fowler said he realizes Helen needs to do what it can to reach out to youth, including providing facilities for those older than playground age.
“I’m just speaking for myself – I’m one of five – but I think any of those kinds of things that we can create that help develop our interaction with our younger generation and helps them to be as a group and interact I think is a good thing for us to do,” Fowler said. “I would be supportive of looking at the possibility of a skate park, myself, somewhere on city property. I would be interested to look at that and what I can say is I will address it with the council to see what their interest is and then we will look at options for that.”
Commissioner Jeff Ash expressed some concerns, including that the city has 1,300 hotel rooms and that puts a strain on sidewalks already.”
Even though skateboards and non-medical scooters aren’t allowed on sidewalks or the Marketplatz downtown, Ash said he felt there could be safety issues.
“It’s just too crowded,” Ash said.
When Fowler pointed out the concept is to build a skate park where youth are not on sidewalks or the streets of Helen.
“That’s fine,” Ash said. “I would be more than happy to look at something like that. Somebody’s got to build it.”
Iam said she also has explored opening an indoor skate park, if necessary, to provide a venue for the youth skateboarding community.
“I’m just trying to figure out if I alone … can bite that off and make it a profitable business,” Iam said.
Since attending the July 14 city commission meeting, Iam compiled a video interviewing some of the skateboarders and shared it with city leaders.
“I asked my daughter to get a photo of a few skaters in Helen and her invitation moved rapidly through the skating community and that last-minute invitation for skaters to show up turned into so much more than expected,” Iam said. “In fact, everything about helping structure leadership and safety for Skateboarders in Helen has garnered much momentum than I had ever expected.”
Iam plans to attend the next Helen City Commission meeting as well, to further discuss the concept and share some of the community support she has received in the weeks since the last one.
