Tony Hawk-sponsored skate park opens in southwest Detroit
Emma Keith
Detroit's Riverside Park of today is nothing like the one Mini Ramirez knew growing up.
“I lived in this area (when I was young) – oh my God, we would come to this park and it was ugly,” Ramirez said. “My dad liked to fish. But if my dad could see this…man, he would love it.”
Ramirez, a Detroit native and member of the Riverside Park advisory council, has worked with the council for five years to revitalize and restore Riverside, now a lush, green space where crowds of Detroiters gathered Saturday to welcome a new skate park.
The skate park is the product of community vision, organizational funding and city planning, evidenced by the Detroit officials, local skateboarders and nonprofit leaders who filled the park Saturday.
More:Tony Hawk visits Detroit to do some skateboarding
“This, to me, is the best skate park in all Michigan — this is going to attract people from all over,” said Evan Hutchings, who's been skateboarding for 18 years. “I live down here too, so it’s been cool to be a few miles away from the best skate park in Michigan, and to have our hand in it like we did and see it become this.”
Hutchings is a member of Community Push, a Detroit skateboarding nonprofit that brought local skateboarders together to choose the skate features and obstacles at the Riverside skate park.
Local skateboarders' high level of involvement in the park's design is part of the community-oriented planning process used by Built to Play, a partnership between the Tony Hawk Foundation and the Ralph C. Wilson Jr. Foundation that's funding skate parks throughout southeast Michigan.
Along with the Riverside Park skate facility, Built to Play is sponsoring six other skate parks in southeast Michigan — such as Ypsilanti, where ground was broken on Friday, or Detroit's Chandler Park, where a fundraiser was hosted Friday.
While Hawk himself wasn’t at the Riverside Park grand opening Saturday – he visited the park at the start of June – legendary X-Games competitor Andy Macdonald skated in his place, showing off tricks in the bowl in the skate park's center.
Skate parks can give kids and young adults a spot to find community and athleticism outside organized sports, Macdonald said.
“Especially with a newer, younger generation of kids, team sports aren’t doing it for them – they don’t want to be told by their coach how many laps they need to run…skateboarding is what attracts them because it’s more about self expression, more of an art form than a sport,” Macdonald said. “So they can do it however they want, whenever they want, and a skate park gives them a community space, a safe place to do it.”
The Riverside Park skate park opening is just one part of a larger, longer revitalization for Riverside, a space Macdonald said used to resemble “a desolate industrial wasteland.”
Most of the park's new funding and amenities, including a dog park and a playground, are the result of a land-swap deal between Detroit and Ambassador Bridge owner Manuel (Matty) Moroun. Moroun's Detroit International Bridge Company will attempt to build a second Ambassador Bridge using the 3-acre space it received in the deal.
In the future, the park could be home to an amphitheater and a riverside beach. But for now, Riverside's new skate park is giving something new and special to its city.
“I think this is the best skate park, to me, in Michigan...we’ve just never had something like this,” said Christiana Smith, a Detroit skateboarder and athlete. “It’s good for everyone – people that have been skating forever and people who are just getting started, because it’s a very open and welcoming park...I think it’s a first – we finally have something here for us.”
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