JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Skaters interested in Artist Walk Skate Park won’t have to wait much longer for the gates to come down and the park to officially open for public use.
City Council voted Tuesday night to approve the Florida Department of Transportation lease on all six acres of the park.
The next step is for Mayor Donna Deegan and FDOT to execute the lease, said Daryl Joseph, director department of parks, recreation and community services.
“This was a little different from our traditional park projects just based on where it is,” Joseph said. “We don’t build a park every day under an interstate.”
The park has been a long time in the making, Joseph said. The early stages of the process began in 2017, and the design team CA Skateparks, which recently designed ramps for the Paris Olympics, joined the team in 2019.
Zachary Wormhoudt, lead landscape architect and project manager of the design-build team at CA Skateparks, said the mission of the project was to build off an art walk foundation.
“We tried to create a series of rooms that were like spaces for public gathering,” he said. “Although the primary function is skating, there are other areas for other activities that can occur. There are stages built into it that just so happen to be fun and exciting for skating too.”
Construction took about eight months for the skate park and was completed in April, Wormhoudt said, but due to the location of the property, other factors slowed down the process of opening the park.
“It’s a heavily desired element for the community,” he said.
While some local skaters have started using the park already, others are impatiently awaiting its opening and hope more could be on the horizon.
Jacksonville skaters are always advocating for more parks, said Pete McMahon, a co-owner at Block Skate Supply, which recently celebrated seven years at 1717 North Main St. in Springfield.
McMahon, who said he had been advocating for the skate park for over a decade, said people in the skating community are excited for the new park, which will be the first on the west side of the St. Johns River that’s not in Orange Park.
Adam Washell, manager at Block Skate, said the park’s design simulates a “flowing art piece.”
“It’s just massive,” he said. “It’s overwhelming.”
One of the highlights of the park is a replication of the railings at James Weldon Johnson Park, Washell said, but the park is also so large that “100 people could easily be there at the same time.”
McMahon described Artist Walk Skate Park as essentially four separate parks in its scale.
Joseph said the landscaping is a unique feature for the park and that the design team and city worked to make it a “recognizable space” with the letters “JAX” incorporated as a focal point.
Skate parks and getting families and young people outdoors are big goals for the city, he said. The hope is “to implement other skate spots — not to this level — but in various neighborhoods around the city” for the skate community to take advantage of.
Wormhoudt said many skate parks are just built to “follow the function of skateboarding,” but in this case, everything was designed to “maximize skating opportunities” and add “artistic features that made it unique.”
“We knew right from the initial description of the project that it would be something different and creative under these overpasses,” Wormhoudt said. “We knew it had a lot of potential for success so we were excited to just be part of the team.”
It was part of the shared use path plan to create a recreational space like this with the help of grant funding from FDOT, said Jill Enz, chief of natural and marine resources. The Emerald Trail connection and a secondary pathway next to the skate park will be available for people to watch the skaters in action.
Other parts of the project will include a plaza space and some artificial turf mounds that overlook the space, Enz said, and offer certain types of programming such as yoga and other group exercise classes.
Even people who don’t skate have been talking about the park, said Mike Peterson, another owner of Block Skate.
“Everyone knows about it,” he said. “It’s going to have a huge impact when it opens.”
Whether the people who go to the park skate, rollerblade, bike or ride a unicycle or scooter, Peterson said, people have been interested in the opening date.
Wormhoudt said even before its opening, they considered the park to be a success.
“We worked closely with the city and local skating community,” he said. “The goal is that it’s a resource beyond just a place to go and skate.”
