Skateboarders are making a plea for council assistance to build the city's first skate plaza, a park-like skateboard-friendly environment to make Tauranga a skateboarding destination.

A skateboard plaza will make Tauranga a destination for what is currently the fastest-growing sport in the world, says skateboarder Garth Urquhart.

This facility is an example of what one Tauranga skateboarder, Garth Urquhart, wants to see in Tauranga.

It will also act as a lure for street skateboarders, bringing them in from practising at schools and business premises.

'I myself have been skateboarding for more than 15 years and I can tell you that Tauranga has plenty of talented skateboarders,” says Garth, who made his submission to TCC's 2014/2015 draft annual plan this week.

'The one thing letting them down is the extremely poor skate parks we have here in our city. The Tauranga City Council has been amazing with providing us with a great, new vert ramp [a form of half-pipe with vertical in it] coming – but that is a different side of skateboarding,” says Garth.

'Now street skateboarding needs a decent facility. If you take a look round our country, you will see most councils are clicking on and are realising a great skatepark is essential.”

A proper skate plaza will also draw a lot of people from out of town and provide a venue for larger competitions that bring thousands of people into the city, says Garth.

Examples are the Washington Park facility at Sydenham, Christchurch, and the Bowl a Rama at Bondi Beach in Sydney.

Tauranga skateboarder Garth Urquhart would like to see a skate plaza like this in the city.

'I could see it on the main stretch of the strand right on the water, or down by Leisure Island. There's a handful of areas where this could just explode. It would be an amazing feature that would draw people.”

Another reason the skate plaza will be more attractive is build quality and design, says Garth.

'One of the big problems with these skate parks is they have gone and asked kids of eight, 10, 12 years old – and they need to come to people like us, who have been doing it for 15-20 years, and we will tell you how to build it,” says Garth.

'We are not looking for the contract, but our input will ensure that it's done correctly.

'I've offered time and knowledge for free, just to ensure the right material and methods are done correctly,” says Garth.

'Some of these builders just want to win the contract; they go and offer more square metres and then they turn round and use the crappiest, lowest grade concrete you can find, which shouldn't even be good enough for footpaths.

'There's ways of finishing concrete so the more a skatepark is used, the better it can get.”

Garth is a concrete specialist and built the grind bench in use at Memorial Park. He's supported by skateboarders Haley Ashby and Glenn Smith, who donated the American-style picnic bench at Memorial Park.

The submission is to alert TCC to the situation, Garth told SunLive.

'It's just something that needs to be done; if we have the council on board maybe they can make some money available for us,” says Garth.

'We just went in there with hope that they would jump on board with us. Tauranga is very quickly falling behind in this area; this very demanding thing that's going on with skateboarding. They seem open to us so, we will see what happens.

'Like we said to them, if you have poor design where is a skateboarder going to go? A skate plaza will be more appropriate for skateboarding than schools and people's buildings; that are better than our actual skateparks.

'It's been extremely frustrating for us to stand back and watch all this happening.”