The Charles River Conservancy held a luncheon to announce the $500,000 challenge grant from the Lynch Foundation toward the Charles River Conservancy’s Skatepark project. The challenge grant stipulates that the Lynch Foundation will match gifts at a five to one ratio. This major donation brings the total amount of money raised to just over $2 million, significantly closer to the $2.3 million fundraising goal.

“Having seen what sports did for our girls…we see this skatepark as something that helps all children. Said Carolyn Lynch as she and her husband Peter Lynch visited the site that is within walking distance of 4 T stops. “To have a skatepark as the pulsating heart of 40 acres new waterfront parklands will rejuvenate this former industrial wasteland,” says Renata von Tscharner, city planner and founder of the Charles River Conservancy”.

The luncheon was held on 6th floor of Cambridge’s EF building where guests were treated to a panoramic view of the future skatepark location under the Zakim-Bunker Hill Bridge in East Cambridge. The luncheon’s Master of Ceremonies is Thomas P. O’Neill III and guest speakers included Peter and Carolyn Lynch, Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino, Cambridge Mayor Kenneth Reeves and State Representative Timothy Toomey.

Under the leadership of Charles River Conservancy President and Founder Renata von Tscharner, the skatepark project has gradually taken shape since the not-for-profit’s founding in 2000. In 2003 Nancy Schon, creator of the “Make Way for Duckling” sculpture in the Public Gardens, joined forces with the Charles River Conservancy after realizing that skateboarders who used her tortoise and hare sculpture in Copley Square as a practice ground did so because of a lack of legal space for them to skateboard in the city.

The Charles River Conservancy has worked closely with both the site’s current owner, the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority, and the parkland’s steward, the state Department of Conservation and Recreation, to make the parklands more active and to provide a facility for Boston’s skateboarders, inline skaters, and BMX bikers in accordance with the Charles River Conservancy’s mission.

Nationally renowned skatepark designer Zack Wormhoudt collaborated with hundreds of local skaters to create a design concept appropriate for boarders of all ability levels with elements that are unique to the Boston area and that usable by skateboarder, inline skaters, and BMX bikers. Several features of the skatepark are designed after Boston landmarks popular with local skaters including the Copley Square Fountain and Boston Medical Center plaza.

The skatepark will be a significant addition to the Charles River landscape as both a haven for the growing number of skaters throughout the area and an attractive project built under highway overpasses, an area that might otherwise have become an eyesore. As the skatepark will be open 24 hours, this will greatly increase the safety of this park area. In addition, the skatepark will be the largest in New England, which will attract tourists and extreme sports events and competitions such as the X Games.

In addition to over 20 foundations and over 300 individuals and corporations contributing, the skatepark also received public funding from the City of Cambridge ($200,000), The State of Massachusetts ($150.000) and the Boston Redevelopment Agency ($100,000).

While continued fundraising efforts are necessary to get the project off the ground, this major gift from the Lynch Foundation will bring the skatepark closer to its goal and hopefully spur fundraising efforts so construction can begin as projected in the spring of 2008.