Skateboarders lobby city for skate park improvements

Greenville’s skateboard community is urging the city Recreation and Parks Department to bring its Extreme Park into the 21st Century.

The owners of Backdoor Skateshop recently gathered two dozen skateboarders at the Jaycee Park facility to celebrate National Go Skateboard Day and focus attention on the updates they say the park needs.

“If this was an updated facility you’d see more skaters using this daily than the basketball players using the recreational courts, as well as the tennis courts, pickleball courts, all of those. You would see the skate park packed,” said Billy Rabon, co-owner of Backdoor Skateshop.

Built more than 20 years ago, the Extreme Park consists of three areas: a large ramp section that is often associated with BMX performances and competitions but also used by the skateboarders; a smaller beginners ramp area; and an oval rink built for inline skating that is also used by skateboarders.

The inline rink, also referred to as the skate park, is what the skateboarders want to see modernized.

“It doesn’t need to be a big, huge thing that intimidates little kids, said Kevin Roberts, 47, a skateboarder for 35 years. “We need something for everyone. Something low impact that you can use and have fun because it’s less intimidating but that can also be challenging for people at a higher level.”

The ideal skate park would have benches and railings for tricks and knee-high to waist-high ramps, lots of greenery and trees to provide shade and benches for seating, Roberts said.

The city isn’t ready to undertake the renovations at this time, but improvements are on the way, said Don Octigan, executive director of City Projects and Recreation Services.

On Monday and Tuesday and perhaps into Wednesday, the BMX side of the park will be closed so a new Skatelite surface can be installed on the ramps. Later this fall, city crews will make improvements to the ramps’ steel structures.

“For the past several years our focus has been on the BMX skate park components, the ramps out there,” Octigan said. In 2022 a portion of the ramps’ infrastructure was rewelded and repaired, and next week’s work will focus on the remaining ramps.

The inline skate section doesn’t get as much use as the ramps, which is why the department’s current focus is maintaining that area, Octigan said.

At the Go Skateboard event on June 21, Rabon and others brought out obstacles they built for the skateboarders to use. They are willing to put in the time and effort to improve the location, if they can get the city’s seal of approval, Rabon said.

Skaters at the Go Skateboard event said repairs are needed at the park. Screws aren’t flush in some areas. Roberts has ripped his pants while skating. He hates to think what injuries would occur is a screw snagged bare flesh.

Surfaces in the park are starting to crack, said Chris Coward, who worked in the skateboarding industry on the West Coast before returning to Greenville. Those cracks can catch the smaller wheels on skateboards and cause accidents.

“What we are trying to get them (the city) to understand is that this is already designated as a skateboard spot. Just let us do what we want with it,” Rabon said.

Along with installing Skatelite, Octigan said city staff will patch cracks in the park’s surfaces.

Sully Engle, 20, has been skateboarding for five years. It clears his mind, he said.

The park needs to be updated because of its place in the extreme sports world and connection to Dave Mirra, the late BMX rider and record-setting X Games champion who made Greenville the center of the BMX world in the 1990s and early 2000s.

“This spot has a lot of memories for all of us, and I would like to spread those memories around people in Greenville who want to get into skateboarding,” Engle said.

“Dave Mirra’s video game, this (park) is one of the levels on it. The fact that it is on a video game that is played today and they let the park turn into these conditions, is sad,” Rabon said.

While the current ramp system is used by BMX riders and skateboarders, there are differences in the styles of ramp, Coward said, that is what the Backdoor group is trying to educate the city about.

Coward said the cost of building a skate park is more affordable because there are more companies that build them, including a North Carolina business that builds concrete skate parks.

Towns like Williamston and Snow Hill have skate parks that are better than the current Greenville facility, Coward said. With Greenville and Pitt County having larger economies than those two communities and counties, he doesn’t understand why the project cant move forward.

Octigan said staff is researching and preparing to apply for grants that could fund the improvements. The city also needs to define its vision for the skate park before applying for the grants. That’s why the city plans to talk with Backdoor owners in the next month to discuss that vision because building additional ramps at the existing park could cost between $225,000 to $250,000 based on the research staff has done so far.

Building a new facility is only one step, Octigan said. The city also has to create and fund routine maintenance for the facility.

“We want to partner with organizations to help make Greenville better in different areas,” Octigan said. He holds up the city’s relationship with Friends of the Greenville Greenways, a nonprofit group that advocates for expanding and beautifying the city’s greenway system, as an example of a city/community partnership that expands services for the community.

Rabon said Backdoor is creating a nonprofit that will raise money for skate park improvements.

“This is our first, beginner’s effort to raise awareness. As the weather gets more tolerable then we’ll start inviting more people,” Rabon said.