HOUGHTON – Saturday’s fundraiser at Dee Stadium was another step towards the local skate community’s goal of a permanent park.

The $125,000 fundraising goal covers what will ideally be a first phase, said Alex Aho, a member of the Houghton skate park committee who grew up skating at Level II, which once stood in the Dee Stadium ballroom.

“We just want to start getting it going right away so we’re not working on it right away and have people saying, ‘Where’s the skatepark?'” Aho said. “If we have something built here, then everybody sees how much use it’s getting, how interested kids are in it.”

The $125,000 figure is based on an estimate from the Tony Hawk Skate Foundation, which puts the cost at about $40 per square foot.

That would be followed by second and third phases in the $50,000 to $75,000 range.

A concept design assembled by Aho and about 15 other local skaters was on display at the fundraiser. It’s a preliminary design mostly intended to show the size of the park – about 3,200 square feet.

By having an outdoor concrete skatepark as opposed to an indoor park, Aho said, there are less worries about rent, utilities, staffing or schedule conflicts.

“There’s plenty of weekends that I came here as a 14-year-old kid with nothing else to do, to find out that there was a hockey game going, so I couldn’t come here to skate,” he said. “If we can make a good autonomous area that people can come in and skate as long as it’s within the posted hours and the lights are on, that’s great.”

A final design won’t be settled upon until after a location is chosen. The committee has been pushing for one of two locations – at the Kestner Waterfront Park before the walkway and by the waterfront pavilion near the Super-8. Another idea brought up was to build on city land near the water tower at the top of Portage Street, though Aho said he’d prefer a spot with more amenities.

“If parents drop off a 12-year-old kid there, he’s stuck at the top of the hill,” he said. “He can’t go skate down the street to get something to drink or go to the bathroom or anything. I’d like to have it in a more downtown centralized area, so it’s more walkable.”

Jonathan Julien, a regular at the old Level II park and president of skateboard manufacturer Quincy Woodwrights, said the lack of a park is a huge gap for Houghton.

“It’s like having a hockey rink,” he said. “The kids that don’t want to play hockey, baseball or soccer need their something. So we’re trying to give them that.”

Harley Keranen of Atlantic Mine would come to the park at least once a week and met some of his best friends there, he said. He missed seeing the ramps in the ballroom. But he’s excited about the chance for a new generation to experience something similar.

“I’ve got a kid on the way right now, so I’m hoping they’ll have something like that,” he said.

Aho said the new park would be built by professional skatepark contractors, who typically handle the design and build, and reach out to local suppliers for pricing on equipment rental and concrete.

Another fundraiser is coming up. Local artists painted designs on decks made by local skateboard builders Quincy Woodwrights, which will be auctioned off April 7 at the Keweenaw Brewing Company.

For more information, go to houghtonmiskatepark.org, or look up Houghton MI Skatepark on Facebook and Instagram. People can also donate through the website to the skate park’s endowment fund at the Keweenaw Community Foundation.