Dallas Needs to Get On Board With Skateparks

Peter Baldwin is tiny but mighty. The 10-year-old, who might weigh 65 pounds soaking wet, flies, cutting through the air on the deck of his skateboard, which stays under his feet through the power of grip tape and finesse, before crashing back to the planet and smoothly taking off. A group of spectators, made up of young skaters still shaky on their boards and die-hards who will be buried with their decks, watch as the nationally ranked Baldwin coasts through the makeshift skate park temporarily set up in Cenzo’s Pizza and Deli parking lot on a Sunday afternoon.

Baldwin is there, supervised by his doting parents, to catch air, spend time with his friends, teach other kids his serious skills and help raise funds for the construction of Dallas’ third skate park.

It’s a typical weekend on a board for Baldwin, who wants to skate in the Olympics one day, but he’ll have to graduate middle school first. Until then, his parents drive him around the state most weekends to try taller half-pipes and deeper bowls than can be found in Dallas. That’s mainly because there just aren't many options for skaters in the city.

When a city lacks skateparks, it becomes a skatepark, which isn’t ideal. Stairs and rails become easy places to slide and grind, and the dents and bruises on public property mean little to the skaters who use city infrastructure as their own personal obstacle course. But the public display of skating fuels the antiquated stigma of disobedient authority-resistant delinquents.

The solution is simple. Give the skaters a park to go to, make it accessible and safe with a variety of challenging elements, and many of the gripes about public skating will be resolved. But often, after a new skatepark is plotted, all seems well until the neighbors next door decide skate parks are inherently good so long as it’s not in their backyard, a special strain of NIMBYism. Blueprints are scrapped, and back to the streets, the skaters go. The cycle repeats itself.

By city planning standards and a needs assessment conducted every 10 years, with the last being in 2016 by Dallas Parks and Recreation, Big D needs 18 skateparks to adequately provide for the population, or one skatepark per 75,000 residents.

There are two. Houston has six, and San Antonio has 17 skate parks, which is more than it needs.

To its credit, Dallas has thrown its wallet at the construction of many new parks without skateboarding features in the last decade, but social stigmas and residential judgment still offer resistance to the opening of new skateparks. But a determined push from some city officials, unlikely but passionate advocates and eager riders from all walks of life is using the inclusive ethos that is integral to skate culture to bring the city up to speed, literally.

Downtown As a Skatepark

Skateboarding was commercialized as an accessible and inexpensive recreational activity in the early ’60s. Quickly, a subculture developed, with its own art, music and energy, and by the turn of the century, a Golden Age of skating had been achieved. As skating has evolved into a competitive sport, officially recognized by the International Olympic Committee in 2020, the widespread attitude toward skating has shifted, and the caricature of a long-haired burnout accessorized with a freshly lit doobie and a provocative deck wasting time at the skate park has faded. Well, mostly.

But with nowhere to go, defeating the old stereotypes still faces its challenges, says Rudi Karimi, a Dallas Park and Recreation board member behind the failed Glencoe Skate Park, which was foiled to a large degree by community objections.

“Downtown Dallas is a skate park, whether we like it or not,” Karimi said. “Naturally, our teenagers, our young adults, even young kids have found these places, and they're going to go and skate there. Wonderful. They're outside, they're getting exercise. Are they damaging the infrastructure? Yeah, maybe. Are they annoying people? Yeah, probably. But they have nowhere else to go. We've never had an adequate [number] of skate parks in the city of Dallas.”

The first skate park in Dallas, small and close to dilapidated, was built in 2007 at Lakeland Hills Park in eastern Dallas. The second, the first large-scale in-ground park in Dallas, opened in May 2025 at Bachman Lake Park after being approved in a 2017 bond package. It took the city 18 years to get to two parks, and though valiant efforts to expedite the construction of a third in Westmoreland Park by 2026 are underway, Dallas may never get close to building the 15 needed to meet the needs of the city’s wheel-sport enthusiasts.

NIMBY-ed to Death

Dallas assesses its recreational amenity needs every 10 years. The next report will be published in 2026, and the city will be far behind the recommended number of skate parks, just as it was in the 2016 and 2006 reports.

“I don't think anyone's followed [these reports] from 2006 to 2016,” Karimi said. “They saw that perhaps we had zero skate parks in 2006, and we needed to have 10 or 12 by 2016. So we lost 10 years of opportunity. … Skate parks were left out, and it caught up with us. It caught up with us now. A park board member is sitting here telling you, we are an embarrassment because [we are behind].”

In the 2024 capital bond program, approved by voters, $2 million of a $1.25 billion budget was dedicated to the construction and refurbishment of skate parks in Dallas. Half will go to revamping the old Lakeland Hills Park, and the other half will go to the construction of a new park in South Oak Cliff at Westmoreland Park. But another half-million was dropped from the bond package for a third small park, which was supposed to go toward the Glencoe Park project, before it was shot down.

“We found out that citywide, probably 90% of the people say it's a great idea, but when you go into the neighborhood right there, 90% of the people thought it was a bad idea,” said Karimi, perhaps defining the very essence of NIMBYism. What might be good for thee is not necessarily good for me.”

Karimi said critics had noise concerns, worries over loitering and congregation, and the inescapable issue of parking supply in Dallas reared its ugly head again. But according to the board member, there was also a deeper unease with the park proposed in the affluent and older Dallas community.

“There was a couple other issues,” Karimi said. “There were issues that I wouldn't tackle. Like when [neighbors] would say, ‘we don't want those other people here’. We are a diverse community in Dallas. We live in the urban core. If you don't like those other people, my recommendation is to go live in a gated community. Simple as that.”

Karimi thinks the egalitarian nature of a skatepark is the very reason the city needs more of them.

“There is that element [at skateparks] of community building, building relationships, making new friends, all the things that we want for our kids,” he said. “If they look completely different from my kid, even better. Even better, because I don't live in a bubble, and I don't want my kids to think they live in a bubble either. So, even better that everyone looks completely different from each other and dress differently and may walk and talk differently.”

Regardless, the plans for the Glencoe skatepark fell through.

“For better and for worse, for right or for wrong, your advocacy is your gift,” Karimi said. “But in the end, we failed. But I held up my head and said, ‘We failed in the best way. We failed trying.’”

Oak Cliff Optimism

Dr. Clinton Haley, in a pair of beat-up purple vans, holds the hand of a teenage skater carefully balancing atop a skateboard resting on the edge of a ramp, telling him to get lower, to squat down if he wants to land right.

The ramp, small but serving its instructional purpose, is sitting on the far edge of Cenzo’s Pizza and Deli parking lot, which has been roped off for the midday free skate demo. About a dozen skaters, aged 10 to 40, some riding a board for the first time ever, coast through the lot. Haley's nonprofit, Skate Parks for Dallas, has a tent set up in the corner, accepting donations for the construction of Oak Cliff’s newest skate park at Westmoreland Park.

The teenager, with a bloodied elbow and Haley’s hand on his back, drops down the ramp and crashes hard into the concrete, his board flying away and his feet swept out from under him. He’s eaten the pavement half a dozen times, but Haley helps him up, grabs the board, and leads him back to the top of the ramp. “Lower,” Haley tells him. The teenager, on what must have been his 10th attempt, finally lands it, wobbly but upright, with a gleefully proud look.

Haley, a doctor of internal medicine by day, isn’t a lifelong skater, but glides on a board as if it's as easy as walking. He picked up the sport when his son showed an interest 11 years ago, and quickly recognized the intrinsic value of the unique community found at skate parks. Driving to the closest parks, all located in the suburbs of Dallas, at least a 20-minute drive away, became exhausting for the physician, who just wanted to spend time with his son, learn a new skill and get some cardiovascular exercise. Discovering the severe shortage of skateparks within city limits, and being a born-and-bred Dallasite, the physician decided he would become the spokesperson for local skatepark advocacy.

“In the past, there's been a stigma with skateboarders, but I think that's been perpetuated [by the shortage],” Haley said. “Without modern skate park amenities, you're gonna have a bunch of kids wanting to skate on the street. Whereas if you had a modern skate park, the chances are much more likely that they're gonna use that. So I thought, my city should have this too.”

Haley can’t do it alone, though. Luckily, he’s found an ally in City Council member Chad West, who has matched the physician’s vigor in creating the concrete and steel communal spaces.

“My children were toddlers when I was first approached by Skate Parks for Dallas and Dr. Clinton Haley and his advocates,” West said. “I hadn't paid much attention to the skating world. … But they brought it up to me, and I love the idea of skateboarding as an alternative for children who might not want to participate in regular organized sports like baseball or basketball. This is an opportunity for them to still be active and involved in a community of people who are into what they're into. That's a little nontraditional compared to what's normal for us here.”

The two, determined to give Oak Cliff the best skatepark they possibly can, struck a unique match contribution deal with the city. If they can raise $400,000, the city will donate the same amount to be used in conjunction with the initial amount allotted in the bond plan, bringing the grand construction total to $1.8 million. Still about $25,000 short, they have until the end of August to close the last gap.

“Council member West has done a really fantastic job of advocating for it,” Karimi said. “He's put his money where his mouth is.”

In Cenzo’s lot, which is a sneak peek into the environment Haley and West hope will emerge at the new park, first-timers are guided by the cool kids, and the old-timers, well into their 40s, soar as if age is only a number and knees don’t ever ache. Here, for a moment, the world is free of judgment; it’s what Haley has become acclimatized to at all skate parks.

“We've met people, different ages, races, socioeconomic status that we never would have met otherwise, and we're certainly better people for it,” said Haley. “[What] we saw was the magic of a public skate park, and that's why we spent so much time lobbying for them over the last nine years, just because we knew the city of Dallas would benefit from it.”

With the knowledge of what happened to Glencoe, West and Haley anticipated some pushback in Oak Cliff, which has its fair share of longtime residents who enjoy a sleepy separation from the ruckus of downtown living. But West says Haley, as the opposite of the stereotype skater, has charmed even the most oppositional of critics, turning the most “curmudgeonly” into donors.

Haley, with perfected patience, says shifting the perception of skaters and highlighting the benefits of skateparks as branches of growth for communities has been crucial in the ongoing change.

“It is an interplay between education, understanding and getting not only decision makers to understand, but also the community to understand and get behind a council member or parks representative,” he said. “So it's a lot of education, and I do my best to jump at any opportunity to go speak to a council member, parks board representative or community neighborhood group.”

Stoner Stereotypes

While the Glencoe failure proves there are still Dallasites set in their ways and resistant to changing their views on skaters and their designated parks, Haley and West agree that city executives are doing their best to accommodate skaters.

“Hats off to Dallas decision makers,” Haley said. “They're beginning to understand the importance of these places that really keep kids safe off the streets, doing a productive activity, with positive peer pressure.”

While the city has clearly dragged its feet creating new skateparks, Dallas Park and Recreation director John Jenkins says there’s a new fervor within the department and credits Haley for being the trigger.

“Skateboarders, they’ve done a good job over the last two years educating folks why skate parks are needed,” Jenkins said. “I think the council and the board, myself included, have all been like, we've got to fast-track this, and that’s why.”

As for the delay, Jenkins said that before Haley, there simply wasn’t anyone reframing skate culture.

“I don’t think people are against skateparks,” Jenkins said. “Doctor Haley explained to me, when [people] see skaters, they normally see them [in] places where they shouldn’t be. But when they have places that are built for them, folks wouldn’t have a [poor] perception because they’re in places where they need to be. That made a lot of sense.”

Aside from using the city as their playground, there’s a deeply ingrained tie between skating and drugs, it’s a truth neither Haley nor West attempts to deny.

“Some of the questions that came up [in planning] is do skate parks bring more crime or not?” West said. “What came out of the meeting from staff and from some of the advocates who've been involved for years is that if they are properly lit and if they are maintained, then no, they don't. There will probably be one or two people now and then who are smoking pot behind the ramp. But you also will have a lot of families with kids out there and just normal kids, other kids who are not getting into any trouble.”

West argues that crime at skate parks is no higher than crime at any other type of park. Haley approaches the argument from a different angle, claiming that skaters likely don’t use drugs any more or less than any other athlete.

“My experience is, I know plenty of more traditional team sport athletes that have substance abuse problems,” he said. “It's just the way the skate park is. It's out in the open. So I don't think that there's any increased incidence of substance use at a skate park compared to other teen groups. The rest is just done behind closed doors.”

The general consensus is that the cons, few and far between and the result of stereotyping, do not outweigh the numerous pros.

Revolutionary Rollers

For the city's skaters who don’t have government ties and connections to park and rec, it still feels like the city, and North Texas in general, is firm in its us vs. them approach.

“I've been in DFW skateboarding for like my whole life to varying degrees at different times,” said 25-year-old Clay Hadley, who grew up skating in and around Dallas. “The prevalence of conservatism in DFW prevents [skating] from being so pervasive.”

Hadley, tired of the sequestering of skaters to the farthest parts of the suburbs and a practitioner of the “if you want it done right, do it yourself” methodology, built a since-demolished DIY skatepark, Deereside, outside city limits using a few spare bags of concrete, a couple of beers and the assistance of a group of friends. Disappointed with the conditions and low number of skateparks, what started as a summer project between friends quickly evolved into a safe space for young local skaters in the know.

He argues that though the city approach to parks is beneficial for young kids, the lesson from DIY parks is that inclusivity can be even more important for people in their most formative years.

“I think [skateparks] do, in some communities, provide a safe space for people of traditionally marginalized spaces,” he said. “I think that's becoming more prevalent now, for me, that safety is mental safety, emotional safety, physical safety. It's safety as an umbrella term.”

The college-age defiers behind Deereside aren’t the only people to have built their own skatepark. For decades, it’s been a subcultural movement emblematic of the rebellious nature that is integral to skate culture. They usually begin with neglected city infrastructure, like drainage ditches, that skaters slowly build on top of. Dallas used to be sprinkled with them, but now there’s only one prolific DIY located under an overpass off Harry Hines Boulevard and a few built on the backs of private properties. Usually, the makeshift parks have a two- or three-year lifespan before cities tear them down, or so is the case in Dallas, but other cities have stepped in to designate DIYs as official skateparks, protecting them from demolition.

EZ7, a graffiti-covered drainage ditch, started as a steep concrete spot for Houston skaters to test their guts in the ’80s and became the premier South Texas destination for experienced skaters to challenge themselves. The spot became so well-known that in 2005, the city of Houston made it an official skate park and even added rails. Now, EZ7 is a skater’s tourist attraction and the destination for the annual Turkey Jam, a Thanksgiving weekend skate show and competition, for over 40 years.

South Dallas has one of the most elaborate DIY skateparks in the state: 4DWN. It was built by two local pros, Mike Crum and Rob Cahill, and is sponsored by Dickies, so it has a bit of a larger budget than the average skatepark built without city backing. Employing the ethos of skate culture to give back to the community, 4DWN operates as a nonprofit and runs a food pantry next to its half-pipe.

But the burden of skatepark construction shouldn’t lie on rebellious skaters and do-gooders, and the city still needs to step up, Hadley said.

Dallas suburbs are home to massive and well-equipped skateparks in Arlington, Grand Prairie, Garland, Plano and Frisco. Even council member West drives outside the city limits to take his children to some of the best skateparks.

“Dallas’ biggest issue, to me, is an avoidance to place skateboarding in its more visible and high traffic spaces,” Hadley said. “Placement is important and intentional. It tells skateboarders that they’re worth something to the city and deserving of a future in the public landscape. I think now, though, with other cities really taking the challenge to create spaces for skateboarders head-on, Dallas’ failure is showing.”

The Simple Solution

The sound of four wheels running over the gaps on slim sidewalks beats out an unmistakable rhythm. The screeching sound of skateboard trucks crying as they scrape against staircase rails violates eardrums. The violent boom of a skater falling back to earth after a momentary flight reverberates off concrete. Skaters in the city make their presence known and undeniable, and until they’re given dedicated spaces, it will remain so.

But skaters in Dallas have new champions, fighting the good fight to reframe skate culture in a new light. Slowly but surely, more of the city will embrace skateparks as community building blocks, and though the city remains behind, and will for many years to come, the construction of new parks continues.

“[We’re] getting that message out, dispelling older stereotypes,” said Haley. “I understand that there's a lot of important things in a large city that need funding. But at the same time, I think based not only on the needs inventory but also on the positive benefits we know that these parks give to our citizens, that it should be a priority in a city that's behind on the number of skate parks.”