Truitt Smith liked a lot of what he saw when plans were unveiled last week for a skatepark in St. Helena.

“Anything is better than what we have, because right now you get kicked out of anywhere you try to skate,” said Truitt Smith, who said he usually skates on Adams Street in front of the elementary school. “It’s not that Adams Street is a great place to skate. It’s just close to town. Sometimes we go over by (Robert Louis Stevenson Middle School), but they don’t like us to skate there either.”

St. Helena Skatepark, the nonprofit organization behind the project, hired the firm Grindline to design and build the 20,000-square-foot park on city-owned land at Wappo Park, south of the Pope Street bridge.

In recent years, the city has run a skate area at Crane Park, but the facility is decidedly substandard when compared to those in other California towns, and many skaters avoid it.

The new park will be located on the Pope Street side of Wappo Park. As currently designed, the park is C-shaped, with the opening facing the Napa Valley College Upper Valley Campus parking lot. The landscaped center of the park will include picnic tables and trees for onlookers and parents.

Reaction to Grindline’s first plans centered on the various skate features in the park, including street-style elements such as stairs, rails and a quarter-pipe for beginning and intermediate skaters, as well as a dug-out bowl formations for advanced practitioners.

Smith and his fellow skaters jotted down their comments on copies of the plan, and submitted the suggestions to Grindline.

“I skate more street,” said Smith. “Bowls are nice, but this has a lot of bowls. I think maybe if they combined them it would be better. But I like the street concepts because there’s a lot of space, and it doesn’t look really crowded.”

Smith’s friend and fellow skater Andrew Quint was also surprised at the prominence of bowls, but said they would present a challenge for advanced skaters who would otherwise dominate the more traditional areas of the park.

In addition to determining the park’s skating features, planners will have to work with the city to settle the park’s drainage issues.

Napa Valley College has agreed to allow skatepark patrons to use its parking lot until the city builds one for Wappo Park.

About $234,400 has been raised for the project, which is estimated to cost $600,000 to $750,000. St. Helena Skatepark’s Julie Redden said costs will depend greatly upon the number of in-kind donations received from local businesses, such as construction materials and engineering services.

On The Web: www.sthelenaskatepark.org