10 years ago, KC community built this DIY skate park. It’s now getting razed for housing

It’s a tale that’s been the plot of so many blockbuster movies.

A small community of people band together to save a place close to their hearts, fighting against incoming development that could do away with their sanctuary.

In this real-life version of the story, organizers and skaters of the Harrison Street DIY Skate Park in Kansas City’s Columbus Park neighborhood are hoping to save the park they’ve poured thousands of dollars and man-hours into building.

In 2014, local skaters Ben Hlavacek and Keelin Austin began advocating to local government to build new skate parks in Kansas City. When advocacy work failed to gain momentum, the duo ventured to Austin’s Columbus Park neighborhood, where East 4th Street and Harrison Street meet, to begin the process of building a do-it-yourself skate park.

The spot had been a long-talked-about proposition among local skaters, according to Hlavacek, since it was just a vacant cul-de-sac. So, in November 2014, the skaters — tired of waiting for funding — instead went the DIY route.

“We were just like, we just want to get something done,” Hlavacek said. “Went to Home Depot with a few dollars and got some bags of Quikrete [packaged concrete] and made a little ramp over there. And it kind of quickly gained a little bit of momentum.”

Ten years later, the skatepark has turned into one of the most respected DIY skateparks in the country, according to organizers who say professional skaters even stop by to shred at the park.

But the park is facing potential closure due to proposed development by the Housing Authority of Kansas City, which is seeking to sell the land to local developer, Edward Franklin Building Company LLC. The developer plans to build 84 new homes on the six and a half acres of land: 58 townhomes starting at $500,000 and 26 single-family units with a price tags starting at $700,000, according to the company.

The long-anticipated development will bring modern housing and connect the street grid to transform and elevate the neighborhood, developers say. But skaters who have built their own community in the neighborhood argue the skate park and development can co-exist as they fight for their sacred ground, and have gathered thousands of signatures in support of their plan to save the skate park.

Early skate park drama

Initially, when Kansas City skaters caught wind of the project to build the skate park, they flocked to it. The informal group of skateboard enthusiasts gave $10 and $20 at a time, contributing to $50 and $100 builds with some concrete poured here and some bricks from pools laid there.

“Once we started maintaining, people started dumping,” said skater Scotty Laird, who has frequently contributed to the building of the park since its inception.

“So we got a lot of illegal dumpers dumping down here, we threw it in here, “ Laird said. “We poured concrete, framed over it, and went about our business. We got a truck or two down here when we started getting concrete trucks and started pouring more walls.”

In February 2015, Kansas City’s public works department blocked access to Harrison Street due to the danger caused by skaters in traffic. The city demolished parts of the park that were on the road, and the park was pushed further up the cul-de-sac and out of the way of traffic.

In previous Star reporting , neighborhood reaction was positive about the park itself, but there were concerns about the street’s closure. The skate park also sits next to land owned by the Housing Authority, a fact that skaters acknowledged at the time but didn’t see as a problem.

The Housing Authority had always sought to develop the land with housing, according to Lowndes. The agreement was communicated to the skaters, led by the nonprofit MoKan Skates , where Hlavacek is president.

Columbus Park was filled with public housing that was built in the 1950s, but torn down in the mid-1990s. More than 200 units were replaced on the eastern side of the neighborhood in what’s called Guinotte Manor, while the western side was left vacant for future development as part of an agreement between residents, city officials and the Housing Authority in the late 90s.

Now, the land that was once used for public housing would instead be used to build homes far outside that price range.

Hlavacek said around 2018, a developer was in the beginning phases of building on the land, but it fell apart. So the skaters kept building, he said.

“There were years where there was nothing in place at all to develop this other than an intention,” he said. “So basically, the park just kept growing.”

‘Only a few of these in the country’

Eventually, the park gained national recognition from skateboarding media brands like Thrasher and Deluxe Distribution. There were also donations: in 2015, a $6,000 grant from local arts organization Charlotte Street Foundation, and in 2016, a $5,000 matching grant from the Tony Hawk Foundation which turned into $10,000 thanks to the Kickstarter campaign that matched the grant.

There were ebbs and flows to how much building went into the park each year. Currently, it is fully-fitted to suffice skaters of all skill levels and ages with artwork that showcases the creative hands that went into building the park.

Graffiti that routinely hits the park is painted over. There have been events held at the park along with giveaways, competitions and clean-up days to make sure the park stays in top condition. Even a frisbee golf basket was donated.

Hlavacek estimates more than $100,000 have been spent on the park, which they say is constantly in use.

“It gets used more than any baseball field or soccer field in the area,” Laird said. “At any given time here during the day, you’ll see parents with little kids here, guys here on their rollerblades, kids on their scooters, guys up here that build the park doing work up here or skating up here. So it’s always being used.”

“This Harrison Street Park is so special. There’s only a few of these in the country that are at the same level of what Harrison Street is,” Hlavacek said.

Hlavacek’s passion for the skate park helped him turn his passion into a career, going from freelance photographer to project manager for builder Evergreen Skateparks.

“This park [has] altered my trajectory to get into building,” he said. “It all started at Harrison Street for me.”

The Columbus Park neighborhood enjoyed the park as well, with residents donating materials, funds and volunteering at the park according to Columbus Park Community Council president Jeff Albright. The park filled an area that previously was a place for unhoused people and drug use and Albright said helped control the crime rate.

“It was a community that pitched in for sure,” Albright said. He acknowledged the positive effects of the park, but as a real estate agent himself, Albright said he is eager to have homeowners move into the space.

“A lot of stuff has happened down here where there’s been false promises, and whether it was the economy that slowed it down or what, it’s just not happened,” Albright said. “But we’ve just finally gotten to that point where we’re so excited to be able to move forward.”

‘A downtown urban space’

In December 2022, the Housing Authority put out a request for proposal to build on the undeveloped land. Franklin’s plan enticed executive director Edwin Lowndes and the rest of the RFP committee, made up of Housing Authority staff and representatives from the city and neighborhood, due to the style of homes, bringing a modern look to a classic style of homes.

“It wasn’t building Johnson County housing in Columbus Park,” Lowndes said.

One of the most important aspects of the plan for the committee was to reconnect the street grids in the neighborhood.

As it currently sits, East 4th Street curves into Harrison Street. Under the new plan, East 4th Street would be extended to connect to nearby Campbell Street and the new houses would face 4th Street. The changes would also see Harrison Street no longer curve, but instead be extended to connect to Northeast Industrial Trafficway.

Gillis Street, which sits in between East 4th and East 5th Street, would also be extended to connect to Harrison Street.

The skatepark is in the center of those plans, and according to Lowndes, there’s no way to keep the skate park and connect the streets.

“By connecting those streets that way, it gives the ability of the buildings to have a true street front instead of courtyards, where your front door looks at a courtyard,” Lowndes said, noting this would also give families a reason to stay in the neighborhood long-term.

“As different families grow, this is an opportunity for them to go into newer housing without having to move out of the neighborhood,” he said.

Since 2018, Franklin has built seven homes in Columbus Park, and managing partner Grant Baumgartner is a frequenter of neighborhood restaurant Happy Gillis. Despite their ties to the neighborhood, they didn’t anticipate the pushback to their plan. In fact, once the skating community learned the plans on social media, developers said they received loads of criticism.

A petition to save the skate park is now nearing 5,000 signatures.

“It kind of jolted us,” Baumgartner said. “It caught us off guard that there was such a strong response from that community. Some negativity, but it was something where we were not aware that that type of response was coming.”

The company is “sensitive” to the issue, he said. But Baumgartner points back to the fact that any development was always going result in the demolition of the park.

“They understood that it was temporary,” he said. “The thought process [for the skaters] always was we’re going to keep doing this until they tell us we can’t do it anymore.”

Other developers proposed apartments to the RFP Committee, according to Baumgartner, and Hlavacek said some of those plans kept the skate park as it is.

Hlavacek has helped build skate parks in other neighborhoods, and said he’s now pushing for a way for Harrison Street DIY Skate Park to co-exist within the new plans for Columbus Park.

He points to parks where this has worked: like a skateboarding pod at Tamarack Park in the Hillsboro, Oregon’s Reed’s Crossing neighborhood and Peter Mathews Memorial Skate Garden in St. Louis, which was also funded by the Tony Hawk Foundation and saw the legendary skater visit the park.

“These houses are going into a downtown urban space, and this skate park is downtown urban activity,” Hlavacek said. “To me, they’re just hand in hand: are you not moving downtown to be close to the action?”

‘They’re asking for it’

Lowndes aims to finalize the sale of the land by early November. Road construction is expected to begin in January 2025, with housing construction on the docket for summer 2025 and homes to be finished in early 2026.

Once the sale is final, the Housing Authority will step back into a supervisory role to make sure the developer follows through with the proposed plan. The Housing Authority can reclaim the land if the plan isn’t executed as written or if it isn’t completed in a certain timeframe.

While residents enjoyed the skate park occupying the space for a decade, Albright said they’re excited to bring homeowners to the area.

“We want people that will come here and establish themselves,” Albright said. “People don’t always care about their rentals, so they don’t maintain the properties. The design that Edward Franklin has put is a lot front porch activity, where people have the ability to sit out front, converse with their neighbors.”

For the skaters, there are other established skate parks in the Kansas City metro like in Penn Valley and Pleasant Valley. But those parks were built by the respective cities, and the 10 years of hard work, sacrifice and thought put into this park can’t be replicated, they said.

The city is planning to build a skate park under the new Buck O’Neill Bridge, but Hlavacek feels it’s not community-based.

“We didn’t pick the location. It was like, this is where it’s going to be,” he said. “It wasn’t planned in the way that we suggested that it be planned.”

Hlavacek also is pondering whether MoKan Skates can take over a city parks and recreation property to build a new park, although for now, it’s just an idea.

If everything goes according to plan for developers, the skaters have five months to savor the last few memories. Once the park is gone, skaters like Laird will go back to “giving security a run for their money” in downtown Kansas City, he said.

“This has really tamed me in my later years,” Laird said. “But once this is gone, I’ll be doing what I used to do, raising hell in the streets. They’re asking for it.”

Developers say they’ll continue to gather feedback from the city, the neighborhood and the skateboarding community as they finalize plans.

And until that time, the fight for the Harrison Street DIY Skatepark will rage on.

“We’re just hoping to exhaust our resources,” Hlavacek said.