The long-awaited Kelso Rotary Skate Park will officially open to the public following a ribbon-cutting ceremony at 12:30 p.m. Nov. 12, the city of Kelso announced Monday.

“I’m excited to see the plans we’ve worked on for years come to fruition,” Mayor David Futcher stated in a press release. “The skate park will finally give kids who prefer action sports a top-notch facility on a par with the ones we’ve provided for team sports.”

A handful of skateboarders who kept watch over the skate park site during construction and helped hand-excavate certain areas will have the honor of breaking in the concrete bowls, said City Engineer Mike Kardas.

“The mayor wants to reward that. … We’re going to let them have the first crack at it,” Kardas said Monday.

All the concrete work on the 10,000-square-foot skate park is done, and workers will finish installing pool coping tiles today. The rest of the week the site will be cleaned up and seeded with grass.

“It looks pretty cool,” Kardas said.

The City Council will determine the park’s hours and rules at Tuesday night’s 7 p.m. meeting.

Workers broke ground on the $364,000 project at the corner of Minor Road and Burcham Street in late August. Pacific-Tech Construction of Longview was the general contractor, and North County Concrete, which has prior experience building skate parks, was responsible for the finish work. The project hit a couple of snags during excavation, but the cost increases haven’t been tallied yet.

The city has prepared a master plan for park amenities, which it will rely on the community to provide, Kardas said.

“They can choose to build a section of walk every summer, add a park bench. … It was really the only way we could do it,” he said.

The skate park was conceived nine years ago by Kelso Rotary club, which donated $45,000 toward the endeavor. More than half the total cost today was paid for through grants and donations, and the city covered the rest.

For information about the ribbon cutting, contact Shelly Timm at the Kelso city manager’s office at (360) 577-3301.