Skateboard riders are about to take one powerslide backward and one kick-flip forward where North Little Rock skate parks are concerned.

North Little Rock city officials plan to close the skate park on Main Street on Monday to make room for renovation of the city's historic Argenta fire station.

But a bigger and better skateboard park is being planned.

North Little Rock and Little Rock officials say they want to pool their resources to have a new park professionally designed and constructed within the next year. They hope the park will bring in more skaters, BMX riders and possibly even national skateboard events.

Right now, Little Rock's "skate bowl" in Kanis Park is inadequate for the sport's more daring stunts, said Bryan Day, the city's Parks and Recreation di- rector. And North Little Rock's park consists mostly of a few wooden ramps.

The proposed park site is a city-owned grassy lot off Pike Avenue and Second Street next to River Road and the riverside Millennium Trail that eventually will loop 14 miles along the riverbanks of both cities.

"We can build a much nicer park with both of us involved," Steve Nawojczyk, North Little Rock's juvenile services coordinator, said of partnering with Little Rock. "And we need people who build skate parks for a living to build it."

The venture could cost as much as $300,000, Nawojczyk estimated.

"We have not identified a pot of money," Day said Friday. "Once we've identified an amount and what the needs are, then I will begin to shake the bushes over here to find some money. ... We want to make it one really good park that would serve a lot of different users' needs."

The project would first need approval from the North Little Rock City Council and the Little Rock Board of Directors.

Cities and corporate sponsors have embraced the concept of skate parks because such parks help keep skateboarders off city sidewalks and private parking lots.

"When I was skating in high school, we would skate in downtown Little Rock all the time and get kicked off everywhere," said Dero Sanford, 25, who has advised North Little Rock officials on skate parks. "We want to build one gigantic skate park instead of having two parks in two towns. The bigger the park, the better the park."

The current skate park area will be used in renovation of the historic Argenta fire station, which is part of a bond issue the City Council approved last year.

But if the wooden ramps and other skateboarding equipment can take the move, the skate park will be relocated temporarily to an open-air pavilion used by North Little Rock's Main Street police substation, Nawojczyk said.

"At least it'll give them a place to keep skating until the other is open," he said. "Otherwise a lot of kids who skate there will be skating on the sidewalks."

Skateboarding has become so popular with youngsters that viewers of the Nickelodeon cable network voted skateboard legend Tony Hawk as the 2001 Athlete of the Year over more mainstream nominees like golfer Tiger Woods or basketball's Kobe Bryant.

The popularity of skateboarding has fluctuated for decades. In the mid- '90s, the California Legislature passed a law that identified skateboarding as "a dangerous activity." That law limited the liability of skate park owners. As a result, more parks began to spring up.

"That began freeing up people to build skate parks," said Chris Hildebrand, project manager for Grindline Inc., a skate park design and construction company in Seattle. "Now skateboarding is perceived as a more solid, established sport and not just a flavor-of-the-month like it used to be."

Skate parks, reportedly numbering in only the teens nationally six years ago, have boomed with the sport's surge in popularity. More than 300 skate parks have sprung up in the last year, according to the Skate Park Association of the United States of America, though the number of existing parks is disputable.

Skateboardparks.com lists 432 verified skateboard parks on its Web site, while thrashermagazine.com counts 659 skate parks. A privately owned, indoor skate park opened at 1214 Main St. in Little Rock in August.