Hong Kong's first enthusiast-designed park will open at the end of this month to cater to the city's growing army of skateboarders. It aims to take the estimated 30,000 boarders off the streets of Tsim Sha Tsui and Wan Chai and onto a purpose-built rink in Kowloon. 'People have boring lives, everyone follows the same path, but we have something special and unique,' said enthusiast Richard Chung Yun-kin. 'With skateboarding, every single person does even the most basic trick differently and is respected for that.'' Mr Chung was testing the new skate park in Lai Chi Kok park in Mei Foo, Kowloon, scheduled to open by the end of the month. About the size of three basketball courts, it will be Hong Kong's biggest skate park. The only existing ground available for people to skate legally at the moment is at the YMCA in Yau Ma Tei, which is about a fifth of the new park's size. Another skate park is also being built by the Leisure and Cultural Services Department in Chai Wan but will be less than half the size of the Lai Chi Kok arena. It is estimated there are about 30,000 skateboarders in Hong Kong. At present most skate near the Hong Kong Cultural Centre in Tsim Sha Tsui or the Immigration Tower in Wan Chai. Warren Stuart, a 35-year-old skateboarding enthusiast involved with the design of the skate park, explained how important it was to get the details right. The angle of the ramps, the transitions of the slopes, have to be exactly right. If you get it slightly wrong, then it doesn't work, he said. 'We built exact paper miniature replicas and computer models to make sure the measurements are right,'' Mr Stuart explained The difficulty of the obstacles increase as you move from one end of the park to the other, he said. 'The flat area is for warming up, moving along, you get to smaller ramps and ledges for less technical tricks. 'Then at the other end, there are two large half-pipes for aerial tricks. Safety is a major concern - it is an extreme sport - but with the right protection and advice as to how to land when the skaters fall, it should be safe. Every sport can be dangerous,'' he added. It is not a quiet pastime. Laughter and chatting mingles with loud bangs of skateboards hitting the ground and the metal surface of the ramps, ledges and pipes. The nearby residents have already complained about the noise. 'The kids have been sneaking in every day and they're there till the early hours of the morning,' said the security guard at the entrance to the park. 'People in Hong Kong are always complaining' Mr Stuart said.