Civic leaders in Little Current, Ontario, a small town on a major recreational boating waterway on Lake Huron, were looking for opportunities to meet the needs of their youth while also attracting tourists to stay a little longer in their area. Boaters might fuel up in Little Current, or stop for lunch; however, there was not much to entice families with teenagers to book hotel rooms and stay overnight.

The community looked for a way to engage visiting children and youth — and some adventurous adults — through building recreation facilities that would attract them. One of the facilities they settled on was a skateboard park. Now complete, the skatepark has been credited with boosting the number of overnight stays and more share-of-wallet from the boating public.

Little Current’s experience has been replicated in many communities, in which a well-designed skatepark has become a significant local attraction, drawing interest not just from the community but further afield as well. The City of Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, located along the south end of Lake Superior, undertook an economic development study for a regional skatepark and found that the park would pay for itself in three years through increased and prolonged tourist traffic.

Managing Negative Perceptions of Skateparks

When many public park managers think “skateparks,” that thought is followed closely by associations to “drugs” and “graffiti.” This just isn’t so. 

Skaters tend to have a bit of a rebellious streak; it’s in the sport’s DNA from when it started, with athletes using leftover spaces such as empty swimming pools and floodwater drainage beds as their playgrounds. But many skaters have a fierce sense of ownership of “their” park and will keep undesirable elements away. There is also a culture of sharing the park with various age groups, and older skaters will often look out for younger ones by giving them space and tips to develop their sport. 

Also, we have often found that they will protect and maintain their park by bringing their own brooms to clean up leaves and litter in the skatepark’s structures. They take a keen and informed interest in maintenance of the facility.

In terms of graffiti, many parks maintain a strict zero-tolerance view. Anyone with a spray can knows that their tags and designs will always, no exceptions, be erased within 24 hours due to special additives in the concrete that allow for relatively easy removal, so what’s the point? Other municipalities embrace graffiti and allow it to become part of the identity of the park, inspiring a community of artists to get involved.

Having easy, multiple-entry access for emergency vehicles — including police, fire and EMS — can also help keep park users safe.

The combination of grassroots and official watchfulness goes a long way to keeping skateparks clean and wholesome.

Community Support Key to Developing Skateparks

As with many community initiatives, when a skatepark is first proposed, there is often strong opposition from some community members. In the case of one park, a vocal minority kept throwing up impediments to the planned skatepark. One of their arguments was that the noise would be disruptive to a nearby seniors’ home. However, when opening day for the park finally came, the viewing area was lined with wheelchairs from the seniors’ home. The residents clearly enjoying watching the flips and jumps in the park, and many now return regularly.

While concern from the public is a natural part of any municipal initiative, and the concerns expressed must be responded to, a combination of facilitation efforts, education, listening and response to concerns helps build understanding and support. 

In fact, community involvement is vital to the success of any municipal skatepark. This is partly because a skatepark is often designed with the involvement of the users themselves. This fact makes these facilities a particularly powerful way to engage what might otherwise be uninvolved members of the community. These parks are icons of our youth and are becoming part of our cultural and recreational landscapes.

Many skateparks start as a dream by younger people in a community, wanting a safe, low-cost place to have fun. It’s not just a “guy” thing, either — increasingly, we find that girls and young women are avid skaters, too.

There have been several parks in which the genesis came from a group of teenage girls, with their parents, who organized a base of supporters. In one case, this group developed its own fundraising events such as dances, and this in turn attracted other supporters. While the money raised by these grassroots groups is often not much, it can sometimes be the seed money that pays to engage a design firm — and it is rare for a municipal council to turn away that kind of enthusiasm.

With tangible evidence of community backing, it is often possible to get support from charitable foundations and other sources, and for local companies to make in-kind donations in areas such as gravel, cement, structural steel and the use of construction equipment. 

There can be an extraordinarily positive community-building effect from mixing varied community youth, industry trades and suppliers, city councilors, parents and park staff during the collaboration effort to get a skatepark built.

Often, it is best to design a skatepark as a two-stage (or more) project so that the available financing allows at least some of the park to be completed, which can help build support for the next phase or phases.

Designing the Park to Meet Local Needs

Community engagement is key to developing successful skateparks given local realities. It may be best to start with an analysis of the community — its economy, demographics, location of existing parks and schools, traffic patterns, location of emergency services and the like. Possible locations for a park are chosen, to include geophysical factors such as slopes, soil stability and potential floodplains. 

Often, the objective is to find a site that will be usable without major work in site preparation so that the maximum possible amount of the budget can be directed into facilities that make the skatepark itself truly spectacular.

Under this planning process, the early stage of information gathering helps guide two kinds of stakeholder meetings.

First, a community meeting might be called to provide information about the idea of a skatepark, with the purpose being to gather evidence about the best possible location, respond to community concerns and find supporters in the community. 

A second meeting can then follow, intended to engage the local skating enthusiast community to design a park that will support their vision. Help at this stage can often come from members of the community who are avid skaters, who travel to other skateparks and have informed themselves about what works. The group can be shown pictures and diagrams of possible elements to include — bowls, rollers, quarter-pipes, hubbas, benches, steps, rails and other features. 

One way to bring the community’s ideas to life is to give the skaters large sheets of paper and drawing pens, which allows them to show what elements they want to include. The resulting diagrams are attached to the wall, and each skater present is given three small stickers so they can attach one sticker to each of three elements that they would like to see in the park. This low-technology way of voting is transparent and yields a good idea of the desired future park.

The designer’s experience then comes into play — perhaps by pointing out that some distances in the park are too great to jump, or maybe that there is a need for features suitable for very young skaters, perhaps in the 4-to-5-year-old range. Various specialists and pro skaters can be brought in to test the design ideas. The park can also be announced online so other skaters and BMXers from abroad can visit. 

With this guidance, it is possible to design a park that fits the terrain and other site conditions. Some designers will then render this as a rotatable, 3-D computer-based image. This image forms a basis for further discussion with the skating community, and once there is at least rough consensus on the design, the park can become a reality. 

All skateparks/BMX parks have unique elements and/or combination of elements that are special to that community, like the “floating pretzel” at Chinguacousy Skatepark in the Toronto suburb of Brampton. True innovation and inspiration is the byproduct of specially designed youth consultations and involvement. 

Patrick G. Morello, CSLA, OALA, ASLA, IFLA, is Principal of LANDinc, an urban design and planning, infrastructure and landscape architecture firm.