Dick Shinaut Skatepark

The transformation of Dick Shinaut skatepark from ramps to concrete is unfortunately a glaring example of how a city can waste nearly $600k of taxpayer money on a poorly designed and built public skatepark.

Project officials reached out to EPSA late in the game – we advocated for something way better, they checked a box and proceeded with their bad plan destined to fail – it’s a lesson of “what not to do” and a cautionary tale to skate communities everywhere.

What went wrong? The project started with no public input sessions and spiraled down its doomed trajectory when someone with the City decided to hire companies that don’t “specialize” in modern skatepark design and construction – a tragic, avoidable mistake in the RFQ/RFP process.

WARNING!

From page 5 of The Tony Hawk Foundation’s Skatepark Best Practices Guide, a big fat red warning to city officials looking to build a public skatepark in their community.

This free online guide book focuses on ensuring the quality of skatepark construction.

From page 4 of the guide, a WARNING!!! before the page 5 warning:

Hiring anyone BUT a skatepark specialty firm (including general contractors with extensive concrete experience) is the quickest way to waste all the money for a skatepark. It will not function as intended, even if built according to the design. Many of the skilled trades in skatepark work are closer to artistic sculptural concreting and require years to learn how to do right.

Again – skateboard wheels are measured in millimeters!

Skatepark design and construction requires highly experienced experts in multiple skatepark specific trades. It helps tremendously is they are also skaters themselves.

Begs the question, why the hell in 2022 were we going backwards 20 years in skatepark design/construction and repeating mistakes of the past?

The public skatepark boom started round about 1999-2000. A lot of bad skateparks were built by cities, along with a few good ones. Fortunately, led by respected organizations like Skaters For Public Skateparks, skateboarders, advocates, designers/builders and city officials who cared to improve outcomes learned from the mistakes of many failed public skateparks. We’ve seen our share close to home with San Antonio’s LBJ, Fort Bliss and Tigua.

Metal Skatewave Ramps – circa 2002

When it opened in September 2002, the Skatewave ramps placed on a concrete slab off Saul Kleinfeld in the Far East were the City of El Paso’s first stab at a public skatepark.

Then City Rep Dan Power called ’em a cost effective solution, but the ramps broke down, quickly became dangerous, and would burn your hide in hot summer. The City went on to purchase 7 Skatewave ramp layouts.

Skatewave is a brand of modular metal skatepark equipment manufactured by a Minnesota company called Landscape Structures and distributed regionally by parks outfitter called Exerplay. The Skatewave product line was actively sold from 2001 to 2017.

The reality of converting Dick Shinaut’s dilapidated Skatewave Ramps to above-ground concrete first popped up in the wake of 2012 Quality of Life (QOL) Bond election on an extensive list of projects to be funded. The metal ramps were falling apart and becoming dangerous. Still, street skaters flocked to the 10,000 square foot slab in the city’s most populous 79936 zip code. Most assumed this would be a cost-efficient, flat slab conversion project – didn’t go down that way.

First whiff of a concrete redo

In 2013, an online document revealed a whopping $800k to be allocated for a concrete redo Dick Shinaut. The document quickly disappeared off the city’s website as it became apparent the city had more projects on it’s 2012 QOL Bond wish list than it could pay for.

Poor design concept

Fast forward to 2019. Without any public input sessions or public announcement, design for the Dick Shinaut concrete redo was well underway when EPSA was surpisingly contacted by the engineering firm Brock-Bustillos to review their first-ever attempt at drawing skatepark construction documents.

The design concept was no bueno, without flow and overstuffed with ill-placed obstacles.

EPSA’s primary issue with the design was a space-eating “non-negotiable” 4-foot-tall middle riser block mandated by “someone” with City who wanted a multi-use plaza concept which could host mariachi band concerts on top.

Instead of simply “overlaying” a much-desired, multi-lane, Street League Series style course on the existing slab…the slab was slated to be demolished due to the slab’s southern “edge” errantly built over an existing utility easement – a huge waste of construction cash!

The modern standard – 2020 Tokyo Olympics

Multi-leveled with many long lanes for back-to-back trick combos going down the line – we count at 20 lanes on the Tokyo course!

This 2020 Olympic competition street course is a what a street plaza should modeled after. Taller end caps for speed with a variety of smaller and larger obstacles that encourage flowing down the line for all levels of skaters. NOTICE: no speed killing, big riser block in the middle here!

Construction began quietly in Fall of 2021 with Pride General Contractors attempting to build their first public skatepark. Alarm bells went off when EPSA learned that Pride’s shotcrete subcontractor was the same company that botched the Tigua Skatepark build in the Lower Valley.

When requesting access to the final construction plans, we were directed to file a FOIA request with City Attorneys that was never fulfilled.

When the radius curves on the rock retaining walls of the south pump track line obviously wrong and concerned emails to the City of El Paso project engineer went unanswered, EPSA reached out to District 5 City Representative Isabel Salcido to express serious concerns that were never resolved.

Unfortunately business contracts “sensitive to any and all change orders” blocked any remedy and small refinements that could be quickly made in the field (and wouldn’t cost a dime) were wholly disallowed by the contractors. EPSA was ultimately banned from the jobsite minus an escort from CID. Our offer of “free” technical assistance to the unskilled skatepark builders fell on deaf ears – sucks to have people solicit your expertise, but ultimately choose a bad plan destined to fail.

It was truly a toxic environment for anyone concerned about a quality skatepark build – the bad course baked-in from the start by not hiring contractors that “specialize” in skatepark design/construction.

After an email requesting an urgent meeting with Mayor Oscar Leeser was never answered, EPSA made a decision to step away from the debacle, telling the Mayor, City Rep and others “the project will succeed or fail on its own merits.”

First pour woes

Obvious to anyone in the know of building skateparks, these guys were blowing it big time!

At the one and only pre-install meeting attended by EPSA, some of the words heard on the jobsite by folks leading the project:

“Skaters will skate on anything.”

“Ah, we’re just winging it!”

“As a skater, you have no value to the construction of this project.”

There were so many examples of Bad Skatepark Building at Dick Shinaut goin’ down, we felt compelled to share a few more photos in hopes helping other skatepark advocates avoid these types of issues in the future.

Social media backlash

The park redo opened in March 2023 and was touted a success in the local media. However, a flood of bad reviews from knowledgeable end users on social media told a much different story.

The Yelp review is extremely critical, and pretty accurate, except one star might be generous.

El Paso skaters deserved better – the end result falls way short of modern public skatepark standards and is extremely frustrating.

Moving forward, we hope cities that invest in public skateparks can learn from the failures of the Dick Shinaut skatepark redo and make better decisions with taxpayer money by simply hiring public skatepark experts.