Huber Heights boy leads effort to build skate park

“I have a few reasons,” Lamb said, taking out a folded up piece of paper from his pocket with large letters on it. “There’s a lot of youth in Huber Heights. And when you’re a kid, you don’t want to just sit on the swings, you want to be able to play with your scooter or your bike.”

Lamb, who is a student at Valley Forge Elementary, also listed several other reasons he thought the city should have a skate park, including safety and getting kids to be active. A skate park also would be a safe place for kids to have fun, he said, and keep kids his age out of trouble.

“Nowadays kids sit on their phones or their PlayStation’s. We’re not as active as we used to be,” Lamb said.

The Lamb family currently travels to Dayton Indoor BMX at 16 Edmund St. and Kettering near Delco Park multiple times a week so the boy can practice and race. Huber Heights doesn’t currently offer something like this.

After the city council meeting, Lamb was invited to the Huber Heights Parks and Recreation Board. The group has asked him to be their “go-to guy” on all matters BMX, he said.

“They wanted to see if I could bring a few friends up one time with me,” Lamb said.

His mother, Summer Lamb, said it seemed the city saw value in understanding what kids would want in a skate park.

“They want his ideas and what he wants to see so that when they are working on everything, they are working on incorporating what his age group truly wants, not just an older person’s idea,” she said.

At a recent meeting, Nicholas Lamb said the board discussed a possible location for a skate park near the intersection of Longford Road and Dial Drive. The board cautioned him that projects like this often take a long time to become a reality.

Nicholas Lamb first wanted to start a petition to build a skate park in Huber Heights. But after talking with Mayor Jeff Gore about circulating the petition, the mayor suggested he talk to the city council.

Nicholas Lamb’s parents said they are very proud of him for going before city leaders and following through on the project.

“Everything he said was purely his, the only thing we helped him with was how to properly introduce himself,” Summer Lamb said. “He’s really putting in the effort to do something he is passionate about.”