We are a group of engaged citizens who seek to advance action sports in Raleigh and surrounding areas. We advocate for more venues and spots where action sports are welcome and supporting the existing community. This includes pushing for less restrictions on current city and county owned areas—especially new construction.

We do have current and former skaters on the board, but not all of us are skaters.

We are a new organization, and took the name Skate Raleigh since our initial focus was on a skate experience at Smoky Hollow envisioned by the initial founders. However, the vision evolved as others approached us and wanted it to be more inclusive.

We agreed to move forward with the goal of representing all action sports, and evolved to include rollerblading and rollerskating, scooting, and BMXing.

We have plans to build an Advisory Board to represent the action sports community. If you would like to participate, send us a note on our contact form.

For more background information on this topic, see “Is everyone on your team a skater?”

We applied for our non-profit status and started to engage the city and public with the Skate Raleigh brand. We decided to keep that brand for now. For the future, we can envision the name evolving to represent the wider array of sports we are embracing—similar to how SK8Cary evolved.

Initially, we wanted to advocate for Smoky Hollow Park to include a skatepark. The city did not embrace that idea since they felt the park design was too far along, and adding it would prevent them from including the “passive” park design on the 2022 park bond. At this point they were clear that a permanent skatepark would not be included, and so we approached them about developing an interim park until Smoky Hollow Park was built. Our team felt that the highly visible location—directly off Capital Blvd., and a major entrance to the city—would demonstrate the viability of the action sports community in Raleigh.

We consulted local leaders and national experts. There was unanimous agreement that while there would be some wasted costs in an interim park, it would serve the larger function of creating momentum for a significant skatepark in the city’s future. The interim park would help create a broader dialogue on city policy towards skating. In doing so, it would create opportunities for “dot” and “spot” locations throughout the city to help provide access to the entire community.

Our team consulted with national experts and have found the costs of the interim park to be directly in line with the feature set. Materials alone make up a significant cost of the project. As many folks are well aware, material and labor costs have increased significantly over the past two years. While there are no bowls or complex features, what we’ve built is in line with project expectations. Also, some of the features will be moveable and be able to be used in other locations.

The interim park is also built to city regulations, which require a higher design and construction standard than a typical DIY project, and is required to be built by licensed contractors.

Keep in mind that it is not just the skate features that cost money: The site itself is over 50,000 square feet, which means it had to be prepped and graded before asphalt could be laid down. The asphalt and concrete alone make up over 50% of the project costs.

Beyond the actual park build, there are additional costs. As a non-profit organization, we have normal costs that relate to legal, accounting, professional services, marketing, PR, etc. While the majority of the funds we raise go to park construction, a portion of it is used for our organization’s advocacy work (including holding fundraising events), in addition to future operating costs of the park. Even after the park opens, we will continue to raise funds to support the broader mission and future park builds we would like to see.

The park is 100% privately funded. Our donors understand and support the mission and goals of the organization. No public dollars are used to fund the park.

We believe that a better, larger, permanent park—in or close to downtown—should be a goal of the action sports community. We believe this is what is best for Raleigh and for the triangle action sports community as a whole. However, raising money for a permanent park without having an initial project would have been far more logistically difficult, and is a very long, drawn out process.

Fixing or improving the Marsh Creek park only puts a bandage on the current situation and would not build momentum for the future. With that said, we support the work done by the community at Marsh Creek—especially the upper level.

We have also started discussions with the city to support more DIY opportunities like we have seen in other cities.

Prior to the build, we hosted multiple pop-up events and other activities to reach as many people as possible. However, we had a very tight schedule to get this interim skatepark accomplished. Due to the city’s scheduling and the fact that we are a small volunteer organization, we could not reach all aspects of the community in this short timeframe.

We started by engaging with a professional, nationally recognized design firm with expertise in building large scale and temporary skateparks. That design firm was recommended by the Tony Hawk Foundation, and built an interim park in Huntington Beach, CA. We reached out to other firms located in NC and the east coast, but they either couldn’t meet our timeline or couldn’t take on the project at all. New Line Skateparks was not just a choice for convenience—they are thoroughly engaged, supportive, and are made up of many former professional skaters.

Additionally, we consulted many local skaters about the design at various stages. Due to the fact that it is temporary, we were limited on budget and time, and therefore reach. Ideally, we would have had a longer process for engaging the community, but that takes considerable time and organizational effort. We had to find a balance between engagement with the entire skate community and getting the park designed, permitted, and built to maximize the community’s time with it before it’s removed.

When we work with the city on a permanent park, we expect to have much more time and ability to engage the entire action sports community to build a park with full community input.

The skatepark is set to open on June 29, 2023.

The city may have to close the park for a week or two in the future. We will post any closure announcements at the park, on our website, and on Instagram.

Like other city parks, it will be open from dawn to dusk. We hope with the future addition of lights that we may be able to extend the hours.

We are working on a plan with Duke Energy to add power to the site. We are unsure if that will lead to extended hours, as that is dependent on the city.

Yes. We are working on the fall event schedule and will provide more info over the summer regarding our event schedule.