Addison Toelkes, 19, Lawrence, is a regular user of the city's skateboard park. The city and local skateboarding enthusiasts are working together to make some improvements and upgrades to the Centennial Park skateboard park.

Dudes, we can help.

Area skateboarders are meeting on a weekly basis to talk about how the city could best spend $125,000 to improve the existing skateboard facility at Centennial Park, which is just west of Iowa Street between Sixth and Ninth streets.

“We’re just trying to make sure it is legitimate,” said Addison Toelkes, a 19-year old Lawrence skater. “We think it would just be cool to sit down and think about what we could do with the city.”

Skaters have begun meeting at 6 p.m. every Monday at White Chocolate, 933 Mass., a downtown skateboarding retailer, to discuss ideas for the park. The meetings began after city commissioners approved, as part of their 2012 budget, $125,000 for Parks and Recreation to repair the existing facility.

Parks and Recreation leaders said they’ll be glad to hear comments from the skating community and said the group still has time to make its thoughts known. Mark Hecker, superintendent for parks and maintenance, said planning for the project likely will take place this winter, with construction occurring in the spring.

Hecker said the department’s current thinking is that the $125,000 will be enough to replace the surface of the skate park and also replace the wooden half-pipe with a more durable material.

But Josh Johnson, a 38-year-old area skater, said he wants to survey users of the park to determine what type of changes they want to see at the facility. Johnson said many skate parks in the Kansas City area are bowl-like facilities or “empty swimming pools” that promote a different style of skating than the “street park” style of skating that occurs at the current facility.

“It would surprise me if people really push for major changes to the park,” Johnson said. “Mostly we just want to have input on how the money gets spent.”

Johnson said he plans to pass out surveys at the park over the next several weeks. Depending on what the surveys find, he said he and some other older skaters may try to organize a fundraising effort to help supplement the city’s funds.

“Hopefully, we can all get together and think creatively and do something unique,” Johnson said.

Hecker said the Parks and Recreation Department would be happy to work with the skaters on doing some “targeted fundraising,” meaning that the group could pick a particular feature of the park that it would like to fund.

Hecker said there was some opportunity to expand the park slightly, but he said the main focus would be to repair the surface, which has become badly cracked since the park was created in 1998.

“What’s there right now is obviously not ideal,” Hecker said.

But it is busy. Toelkes, who said he skates about every day, said it was not unusual to have 70 people at the park, some skating and some “who just hang out and act goofy.”

Johnson said he thinks the numbers will grow because many younger skaters are now sticking with the sport as they age.

Hecker said the department recognizes the value of having a skate park. In fact, he said the skate park and the adjacent Frisbee golf course — two sports that weren’t on many radar screens 25 years ago — have made Centennial Park one of the busier parks in the city.

“It seems like you can go by the skate park every night and the lights are on,” Hecker said. “It is a busy place.”

Commissioners approved the $125,000 worth of skate park improvements as part of a $1 million package of maintenance projects that also includes repairs to the Riverfront and New Hampshire parking garages, City Hall roof repairs, outdoor swimming pool and slide repairs, and Deerfield Park repairs.