Schuylkill River Skatepark supporters Josh Nims and Anthony Bracali don't know why a big corporation hasn't offered to shell out $5 million yet.

After all, the deep-pockets company would likely get naming rights to the gateway park on the Ben Franklin Parkway, host to 70 events a year and future home of the Barnes Museum.

Within the year, 400,000 bike path users will start to pass the site, sandwiched between the river and Eakins Oval. Nims, head of Franklin's Paine Skatepark Fund, the advocacy organization that's looking for dough, expects the number will jump to a million once the path is extended to South Street. The marketing alone should have companies banging down his door. So what gives?

"We're only as good as 25- to 30-year-old professionals can be," Nims says Saturday afternoon after speaking at a session called "Skate Parks NOW" during the Design on the Delaware conference at the Wyndham hotel. Maybe they don't have the connections. Maybe companies don't recognize the opportunity. "But if they were smart they would."

"No Fortune 500 company would want to spend $5 million on a skate park," but they would on a space with multiple uses, says Bracali, the project architect, who feels more comfortable strapped into rollerblades than on a skateboard.

To lure big bucks their way, Nims plays up the concept that the park is an attractive public space designed to be discovered.

That's the philosophy Nims and Bracali tried to get across to the three engineer types, two reporters and one PR guy who attended their session, which also featured a recreation equipment salesman. (Low attendance can be attributed to their competition at the conference, the "Building Conversions: Dollars to Drinks, Dinner and Digs" pub tour.)

A blond woman who's studying environmental science at UPenn notes that having competition space is an advantage for a park. Nims sets her straight. "Competition is very low rung for skateboarders themselves," he says. "For parents and those that don't skate they equate it to other sports like baseball. 'We'll have a game. Someone will win.'"

Skating is different, he says. It's about socializing and improving, not scoring. When the conversation turns to liability and injuries, Nims concedes, "Skateboarding results in a lot more scraped-up elbows and knees than, say, fishing."

"Who do you fish with?" Bracali jokes.

"Skateboarders who are good at it tend to be the ones that stay with it," Nims says, noting that few injuries require medical attention. The Temple Law graduate also says with 25,000 skateboarders in the city, there's never been a lawsuit here.

After the session, Nims stays late to talk to whomever wants to hear more. He's even working with state Rep. Babette Josephs, a Democrat representing Center City, Bella Vista, Grays Ferry and parts of other neighborhoods, to get state matching funds.

"It could be a day away or a year away," Nims says, "but it's inevitable."