A groundbreaking ceremony for the long-awaited skate plaza at St. Cloud’s Heritage Park will be held Thursday. The $516,000 plaza was spearheaded in 2006 by Austin Lee, who, at the time, was a freshman at Apollo High School. The project will be funded by city park improvement money as well as private donations. Austin’s Lee’s father Jeff says so far, about $120,000 of the $150,000 goal has been raised.

"It’s pretty incredible. The entire skate park community is very excited about this. They’ve all worked very hard to accomplish this goal. To be honest, there were times when they thought that it might not happen. This project has been in the works actually over 15 years started by other people and it’s only been since 2006 that the city has latched onto it and helped us make it come forward,” said Jeff Lee.

Thursday’s ceremony will be held at 2:00 pm at Heritage Park on 33rd Avenue South in St. Cloud.