Unless you have a very small park, you’re going to be looking at spending a good $50-75K on ramps (including labor) if you buy them, and you could spend quite a bit more. You might think you’ll save a lot of money building the ramps yourself, and hey, how hard could it be? But bear in mind you’re lying to yourself. Building an indoor skatepark takes a lot of time, especially if you’re not an expert. If it takes you four months to do what a professional team can do in two weeks, you may have just blown through an extra three months of rent and now you’re not saving any money. Plus you might mess up the ramps, and as a result the kids won’t like them and so you’ve only got half the customers coming in that you would otherwise have. So trust me, unless you absolutely know what you’re doing go and pay someone else to build those ramps for you. And don’t just pay the 18-year old kid who built a halfpipe in his backyard once and who has some “cool ideas”, I mean really hire a professional company, like Team Payne.

Another way to find out who to hire is to find out who built some of the private indoor parks that are in videos so much these days. Unfortunately I don’t know exactly who built the Berrics, or the Blackbox skatepark, or any of the others, but I bet someone else does and will comment on this post.

Some cities make the mistake of hiring a general contractor with no experience in skatepark design or construction. Other cities make the mistake of hiring a contractor whose only experience is having built shoddy skateparks in the past. But even those firms that specialize in skatepark design and construction often build skateparks that are underutilized and do not accomplish the purpose(s) of the skatepark as intended by the city government funding the project. To this end, here are some tips for city governments considering building a public skatepark and how they can make it successful for all involved.

1. Involve those who will use it. Invite skateboarders to provide input on the design of the skatepark. This will not necessarily improve the design of the skatepark, but it will certainly make skateboarders feel more invested in it and therefore more likely to use it and take care of it.

2. Hire a skate park design firm that employs active skateboarders. A design firm that does not have skateboarders on the payroll almost certainly will fail to build a good skatepark.

3. Hire a construction firm that employs skateboarders. Skateboarders know the small details of skatepark construction that make a big difference, like how to finish the surface of the cement (smooth rather than rough, but not too smooth lest the surface become overly slippery).

4. Simple is often adequate, if not better. A skate park doesn’t need to have huge bowls, curves, twists, and such to be successful. It might look neat to the non-skateboarder, and I’m not saying big bowls are a bad thing, but for cities on a limited budget there are much simpler, inexpensive things that can be built.

If your city has a problem with skateboarding on public and private property, take a look at what the skateboarders are skating on, and then duplicate it at the skatepark. Chances are they’re skating on ledges, benches, handrails, and stairs. If you build a skatepark that does not include these obstacles then you haven’t created an incentive for the skateboarders to stop skating the public and private property where they can find these things.

A successful skatepark can be as simple as a 100′ x ’25 square pad of concrete with 4′ high 30-degree banked portions on either end, a 10′ metal rail placed 1′ high running lengthwise in the middle, and a 1′ high, 2′ wide, 10′ long cement ledge with metal edges also placed lengthwise in the middle or along one of the sides. While not fancy, this kind of skatepark would be affordable and popular, if constructed properly, and a few simple additions would make it that much better.

5. Watch a skateboard video or two. I don’t mean a feature film like The Skateboard Kid, which isn’t an accurate portrayal of skateboarding or skateboarders, I mean watch one of the videos skateboarders watch. This is as easy as walking into your city’s local skate shop and telling them “I’m with the city council, and we’re considering building a public skatepark, and we want to know what the kids will want. Do you have any skateboarding videos you can recommend that will help us understand what skateboarders want to skate?”

6. Watch Groundbreaking, the Skate Plaza DVD. This video details the design and construction of the ultimate public skatepark. With a price tag over $1M, it is not for the small municipality, but for any major city, this type of project would not be outside a realistic budget, and due to how popular this type of park can be it could easily pay for itself in terms of the business it would bring to the city, county, and state. The first Skate Plaza, built in Dayton, Ohio, has drawn tens of thousands of visitors from all over the world, along with the dollars they spend on food, lodging, and tourism.

By watching the video you’ll see the full range of street-like obstacles skateboarders are drawn to. A successful skatepark need not implement all these obstacles nor do them on such a grand scale. A city could build a skatepark one tenth the size and it would be highly successful.

7. Don’t hesitate to ask for help. Local skateboarders, skateshops, skatepark design firms, other cities, random bloggers like me, and many other people would be more than glad to give you free advice to help your project be successful.

It’s not even officially open yet, but it is skate worthy, if a little dusty. Mark and I just headed on down there for a chilly, January session, and although there are several park in Utah that I have yet to skate, I don’t mind saying I’m pretty sure this is the best one.

Directions: Get off at the exit in American Fork where the llamas are. It’s the 500 east exit. It’s just south of the Lehi exit, and just north of the new Pleasant Grove exit. It’s where Wal-Mart used to be but isn’t anymore. So get off there and head east, towards the mountains. You’re going to take a left, but don’t take the one by Carl’s Jr., take the one that’s just before Deseret Industries. So now you’re going north. Head a few blocks and it will be on your left.

Yes, there are bathrooms, and you’ve got places to eat and get drinks and such within a few minutes walking distance (I’m not sure the road going to it is skateable).

If you’ve checked out the Skate Plaza then this park will look familiar. While not of the quality that the Skate Plaza is, there are a lot of similar features. What excites me about this park is that it is one of the first parks to have legitimate stairs, handrails, pyramid hips (outside of Park City which is too far to drive and too snowy all winter), and it’s all set up in such a way that you can actually get some real speed. You want to talk about valley flyout? Get some good pushes in up by the bowl and by the time you go down the three banks you’ll have so much speed you can fly ten feet no prob when you hit the bank at the bottom going the other way.

This park also has a lot of obstacles you may have never seen in Utah before. Stuff that looks more like Barcelona. The metal on the ledges is of the correct type and grinds great without wax.

When I saw this from the freeway I thought it was going to be small and kind of lame, but it really is a good park. Congrats American Fork, you’re on the map. They just need to get all the dirt off of it. The place is a mess right now.

But enough of me talking, here are a bunch of photos.

The Bowl

I’m not a bowl guy, although I’d like to be. But I at least dropped in and rode around a bit. Everything seemed to be decently smooth. I do think it was a little tight in areas, but I’m sure that won’t keep anyone from ripping it. Sorry, no pool coping, it’s metal all around, but it does look to be decent metal at least and well placed.

A month or so ago I drove a half hour from where I live to go skate at the South Jordan, Utah skatepark. I like skating there because it is relatively well-built, has two skateshops nearby, a gas station down the street where I can get a soda afterwards and maybe fill up, and because it is the only skatepark I know of in Utah that does not allow bikers. Having had a collision with a biker at the Draper skatepark, I am motivated to not repeat the experience, and that makes the South Jordan park especially attractive.

But on this day my hour round-trip drive was in vain because the skatepark was closed. Somebody had spray-painted various messages in several spots all around the park, and a sign on the gate said the park would be closed until the city was informed as to who the perpetrator was. Today, more than a month later, the park is still closed. I didn’t commit this crime, I don’t know who committed the crime, and it is not within my power to find out who committed the crime. Yet I am being punished.

Admittedly I do not know the motivation behind the city’s decision to close the park, and so at this point I can only make assumptions. I assume the park has been closed because either 1) the city believes the graffiti was done by someone who uses the skatepark, or 2) the city believes the graffiti was done by someone who is known to those who use the skatepark. If the person who did the graffiti is someone who does not use the skatepark nor is known to those who do, then it would not make sense to close the park, since those who would be motivated to do something as a result of the park being closed would have no power to affect the situation.

Perhaps the city possesses information I do not, but from what I can gather from the situation, it is more believable that those who committed the crime were not skateboarders nor anyone known to those who use the park. My reasoning is thus:

1. There does not appear to be a motive for skateboarders. Why would a skateboarder do this? It would be one thing if it were well-done, artistic graffiti. Then I could see it being the work of skateboarders who simply wanted to give some character to their skate spot. It also does not appear to be gang related tagging. It’s just mischief. It is simply immature scribbling, the kind you would expect from a white sixth-grader from a middle-class neighborhood, and I cannot begin to see what would motivate a skateboarder to do this in a skatepark.

I’m sure there is some city official who thinks graffiti is mixed up with skateboarding culture, but it’s not. There was once a subset of skateboarding that became mixed up with the tagging scene, but that was around 1992-1994, over ten years ago. Today it is simply not something that skateboarders are into. Grafitti is not promoted in skateboard magazines, videos, or any other media, and skateboarders tend to be pretty good at following what they see in the media presented to them.

2. There is an adequate motive for non-skateboarders. Whereas I can’t see any motive for skateboarders to graffiti their own skatepark, I can see plenty of motives for non-skateboarders. Perhaps it was a few sixth-grade kids, being mischievous as they are want to do, and they chose the skatepark because they knew it would get attention but might not be as serious as spray painting on city hall. Perhaps they were yelled at by some skateboarders and were getting revenge. Perhaps it was done by BMX bikers who are offended by not being allowed to use the park, or who got into an altercation with skateboarders at the local high school and figured this would be their means of revenge. Football players and other jocks typically don’t get along with skateboarders, nor do cowboys. It could have been anyone with a grudge against skateboarders or it could have simply been mischevious kids, and either of those scenarios is a far more plausible motive than that skateboarders would ruin their own spot.

3. They haven’t caught anyone. If it really were a skateboarder the word would probably get out to other skateboarders and eventually someone would be sick of the park being closed and they would inform the city as to who the culprit is. But that hasn’t happened after several weeks.

However, I could be wrong. Maybe it was a skateboarder. Maybe it was even a skateboarder who lives in the area and uses the park regularly and is therefore being directly affected by the park being closed. Maybe there are other skateboarders who are also being directly affected by the closure who know who did it. Even if that is the case, is closing the park the best way to handle the situation? What does having the park closed accomplish? If it was indeed a skateboarder who did this then it may help in catching the perpetrator(s), but even so, is it worth it? Consider these points:

1. Closing the park hurts the local economy. Based on my experience with the SJ park I would guess that around 500-600 unique individuals use the park each month. On any given Saturday you can see upwards of 100 skateboarders at the park at any given moment between noon and dusk. In just one day there might be 200 skateboarders who come to the park. Out of those skateboarders, many, perhaps even most, are not coming from South Jordan but from other cities. I drive a half hour and I have friends who come from farther away. I know of individuals who come from as far as Springville or Ogden on a regular basis. This means they are coming by way of automobile, which increases the likelihood of them spending money in the immediate area on gas, food, and drink.

It is not unrealistic that I might spend $40 in the immediate vicinity when I use the park. Therefore even with a conservative estimate it is not hard to imagine that perhaps as much as four or five thousand dollars is being spent at local businesses each month because of the skatepark. But with the park closed, that money is not being spent and while the amount is perhaps not large, it is still easily more than the cost of painting over the graffiti.

2. It’s bad politics. Politicians in SJ might think that skateboarders are just kids. That’s true, most of them are, but there are a fair number of us who are old enough to vote and who do. I don’t live in SJ, but if I did, this would matter to me and would affect my vote. And what of all the parents who plan on dropping their kids off at the park who have their plans interrupted because the park is closed? It puts a negative taste in their mouth with regards to the city, because after all, why would the city close the park rather than just fixing the graffiti with a layer of gray paint?

3. It teaches kids that adults don’t understand them and are therefore not to be respected. You remember being a kid, don’t you? Remember when you were blamed for doing something and punished, even though you hadn’t done it? Do you remember how it made you feel? Punishing those who did nothing wrong doesn’t fix any problems, because you’re punishing those who didn’t cause the problems in the first place. Punishing the culprit(s) at the expense of hundreds of others probably does more damage than letting the culprits go free.

4. It gives the criminals what they want. “Wow! Look at all this attention this issue is getting! Skaters are mad, the city is mad, the park’s closed…look what I was able to do!” Closing the park is like pointing a news camera at a protestor–it just encourages more of the same behavior. If you want this type of behavior to go away, simply paint over the graffiti or otherwise clean it up and then ignore it.

In closing, I believe the city has handled this situation in a manner that does not do much good and certainly does a measure of harm. I hope they will treat skateboarders the same way they would treat basketball or baseball players. After all, if someone spray painted a basketball court the city would not put up a fence around the court and declare that the court can’t be used until someone fesses up. They would not close a baseball field and prevent Saturday’s Little League game because someone painted graffiti in the dugout. And if someone spray painted on a wall by a sidewalk they would not close the sidewalk to pedestrian use. Why are skateboarders singled out and treated differently?

During our brief conversations Kent struck me as being a genuinely nice guy who cares as much about skateboarding as I do, which is quite a bit, although he has succeeded in becoming much more involved and making more of a difference than I have as of yet. His work is aiding skateboarders around the world to get public skateparks built in their cities and get them built the right way.

In addition to the respect I have for Kent based on our limited interactions, I now have a newfound respect for him based on his attempt to relearn how to skate street. Partially motivated by a desire to be in touch with today’s young skateboarders as well as, I’m sure, a pure desire to simply skate more Kent bought a street setup and has started throwing himself down stairs, apparently.

I go to a lot of public parks, and typically what I see is virtually empty bowls and crowded street courses. However, this is different from the days when I saw completely empty bowls and crowded street courses. And the skaters in the bowls aren’t just old guys, there are younger guys too. I like to see the younger skaters in the bowls because I figure they’re skating for the fun of it, rather than trying to fit an image.

The only thing more rare than a young skater in a bowl is an old skater in the street section, and maybe that’s why I get a kick out of reading about Kent’s attempt to skate street more. I’m old, having just turned 31, although I’m not as old as Kent with all his 38 years. I grew up in Southern California but barely missed out on the old skatepark era. Pipeline and Del Mar were torn down before I had a chance to skate them. I have had the luck of having skated the Baldy pipeline, which is my one connection with the old world. I chickened out and didn’t jump the gap though, I just walked across the board that was sitting across it.

During my time street skating was being born as we know it today, pushed by up and coming companies like H-Street and Blind and skaters like Matt Hensley, Brian Lotti, Jason Lee, and Mark Gonzalez. Handrails were a new thing, a kickflip on flatground was considered a pretty good trick for a normal kid, and the only tranny you got to skate was mini-ramp if you were lucky enough to live near one.

I was pretty darned lucky because I had a mini ramp in my backyard. Not only did I learn all the noseslide to crook variations in 1992 but I also was learning frontside rocks, melons to fakie, and back lips. But my mini-ramp got torn down when my sister decided it didn’t fit into her vision of what our backyard should look like for her wedding reception, and it never got rebuilt.

In the past few years I’ve been making a comeback on transitions, much the way that Kent is relearning street. And yesterday I did something I haven’t done in probably 13 or 14 years–a backside rock and roll on a transition higher than three feet. Backside rock and rolls have always been hard for me, I much prefer the frontside version. But after watching the protec pool party video and some footage of the Gonz skating a park I decided I really needed to make this trick again. It took me a few tries just to really try it on a five foot tranny, and I fell a few times when my front foot came off, and the times I made it I felt really awkward, but even with such a simple trick I felt that elation that I only get from skateboarding, the feeling that no matter what else I’m failing at in life, at least I can still go out and skate and learn a new trick. Now I just need to try it in the deep end of the bowl…

But then two guys showed up who were amazing and made me realize that the park is pretty darn nice, or can be, if you’re as good as they were.

2415 East Bengal Blvd. (7600 South)

What’s weirdest about this park is that it has hours for different people:

On school days the park is closed until 3:30pm because it’s right next to an elementary school. Don’t want the kids beind distracted, I guess. Otherwise it’s open from 7am to 9pm, and yes, it has lights.

However, on Mondays and Thursdays the park is only open to BMX riders from 6pm to 9pm and on Sundays from 7am to 11am.

And during the summer only elementary kids (I forget what ages that means exactly) can go on Wednesdays from 7am to 12pm, and if there’s summer-school then on Fridays it’s only open to elementary kids from 1:30 to 3:30pm.

I feel like I was incredibly blessed to happen to go there randomly and be able to skate. Sheesh.

But as far as the stuff there, there’s a nice low flat bar to learn tricks on, some low banks for doing the valley fly-out, some bowls, two with a spine between them and some extensions. There are some decent ledges, although all around the park there is a ledge that would be nicer if it were wider, but it’s only about four inches wide on top and then there is rubber “gravel” that looks like asphalt but is rubber and tends to get all over the park.

Have fun, and don’t forget to put the schedule in your Treo.

Case in point, the South Jordan, Utah public skatepark.

If you click through to that page, you’ll see in the second photo a gray building with pillars. This is the SJ public swimming pool. It’s housed inside a two-story, expensive building, which I’m guessing has a climate controlled environment, a changing room with showers, lots of plate glass, lights for swimming after it gets dark, and who knows what else.

It’s not that I’m not grateful for the skatepark. Just about any skatepark is better than no skatepark, even if it’s designed and/or built incorrectly.

But if a public swimming pool has inside an air conditioned building with lights and all sorts of amenities, is it too much to ask that we just put up a roof over the skatepark? Sure, AC and/or heat would be great, but I’d be happy with just something to keep off the snow, ice, and rain, and to shade me from the sun during the summer. I’m not sure what the cost of a large metal roof structure would be, but I’m guessing it might be around $50K. No small sum, to be sure, but how about leaving out a $50K bowl, leaving the area as flat concrete with a few marble benches, and spending the savings on a roof?

You might say that the swimming pool justifies the costs because more people use the pool than the skatepark. But you’d be wrong. Frankly, I don’t know what gets used more, but I know that’s not how they justify the costs. They justify the costs by charging money.

Which begs the question, would it be so bad if public skateparks charged a slight fee? This is where skaters would probably be divided between those who have money and those who don’t. For those who have some income, the idea of a skatepark being less crowded, covered, and monitored to keep out bladers, bikers, and kids on scooters seems worth $10-25 per month. Add an enclosed structure with AC and it sounds even better.

What if some public parks were free, per the status quo (at least in Utah), and others charged and provided a higher level of service in exchange? Everyone gets a choice, everybody wins.

Just some thoughts. Oh, and how about an enclosed, air-conditioned Skate Plaza? Now that would be nice.

On the other hand, you have to make lease and utility payments for the building every month. Kids punch holes in the walls, spill soda on the ramps, get in fights, steal stuff from the park shop, smoke weed behind the ramps causing the cops to shut you down for two weeks, and sneak in without paying. You never get to skate because you’re always taking care of all the problems. All the chicks that dig you are 13. And even though all the kids complain that you’re charging too much, you can’t seem to even pay the bills, let alone have anything left over to buy a hamburger with. And you had to borrow $80K to build the ramps and now the bank is breathing down your neck wondering where that $2K payment is every month.

Does having an indoor park really work? Sure, it’s great for the kids, but if a park doesn’t make money it can’t stay open for long. I’m going to solicit responses to this from as many park owners as I can get. We’ll see which side of the story is correct, if it’s a combination of the two, or if there are certain things some owners have found that make it work that they can pass on so other owners can keep their parks open.

If you know a park owner, pass this link on to them.

Despite some “interesting” features the park is still fun to skate. That said, I probably won’t go back.

The good: Construction

The bad: Crowded street course

The ugly: Wearing a helmet

In Utah you don’t have to wear a helmet anywhere, so I have trouble handling that. I skated for about 1-2 hours without one, as did most of the other kids there, and despite the skatepark being right next door to what appeared to be the Monrovia Police Station no trouble was had.

The bowl is interesting, to say the least. There’s a shallow part that’s about 3-4 feet deep. Probably 3. Then you’ve got the deeper end that’s 5-6 feet. See below.

There are some bumps in between the shallow and deep end of the bowl, which Concrete Disciples describes as “a totally unique element for this area and they make for some really creative lines. Most skaters can’t seem to figure them out and ride straight over them.” That’s the truth. I couldn’t figure out what to do with them. Then again, I’m not a very good skater.

The street course is decent, but small. There’s a 2 stair 3 double set, but it’s hard to get the speed to ollie it, let alone do anything else down it. There are ledges and rails aplenty, but again, getting speed and having time to set up can be tough. But there were some kids there pulling out some good tricks, regardless.

It might be worth checking out once, but since there are so many other spots and parks around SoCal to skate I can’t say I’ll be going back to this place anytime soon.