Skateboarders get their own 'street park'
When Dave Mayhew was growing up in the 1980s, Madison had no skateboarding park, but that didn't stop the now-retired professional skateboarder from finding his own spots to practice. When the weather was good, he and his friends would skateboard at the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Humanities building and Library Mall area, designed unwittingly with the perfect array of skateboarding elements like stairs, railings, benches and odd-angled walls.
"It's a perfect example that a lot of people failed to realize, that it's just as simple as a ledge that you can put somewhere and the kids will just go there," he said.
In the winter, Mayhew and his friends would drive down to Rockford, Ill., every day to visit its indoor skate park.
In the years since, many nearby communities such as Middleton, Mount Horeb and Waunakee have built their own parks, but by next week, skateboarders in Madison will no longer have to drive out of town or get chased away from ad hoc skate parks. Mayhew, with the financial help of Jack Lussier, was put in charge of designing a skate park for the brand-new Goodman Community Center (formerly the Atwood Community Center) on Madison's east side.
Director Becky Steinhoff said center workers were inspired to create a skate park in the long, narrow space behind the building because of the popularity of a simple skateboarding ramp at the former Lussier Teen Center on East Washington Avenue. When the teen center moved into the new Goodman Center, it seemed like a natural fit.
"One of our desires is to have the teen center have a really diverse group of teens, and the kids who board are a much different population," Steinhoff said. "It was through talking to them that we tried to create something that would keep them and attract them to the teen center's after-school hours."
She added that unlike in the old teen center, the skate park at the next Lussier Teen Center will not be locked when the teen center is closed and will remain open until 10 p.m. every day. With the new center and skate park, she said, teens will have something of their own in Madison.
"I think teens are often marginalized in our community," she said. "Teens don't get much in our culture if they're not into sports and they're not into school-based activities that really engage them. ... This is a place that they can take ownership in, that they can have pride in."
Lussier, who is chairman of the board of The Capital Times and president of its affiliated Evjue Foundation, said he particularly likes to give to projects that benefit young people. His efforts over the years include financing the Lussier Family Heritage Center, the Lussier Family East and West YMCAs, as well as Lussier Stadium, which is used by East and La Follette high schools. He has also made significant donations to MATC's Community Scholars program, the Madison Children's Museum and Circus World Museum in Baraboo.
"One of my mottos is 'Today's youth, tomorrow's future,'" he said.
He became involved with the teen center in 2002 after The Loft, a popular destination for teens since World War II, closed its downtown location. Renaming it the Lussier Teen Center and moving it to East Washington Avenue, Lussier has kept the hangout for teenagers going for the past six years. After the Lussier Teen Center moved to Waubesa Street with the new Goodman Center, he said keeping and expanding the skate park was important to many teenagers.
"A couple of kids told me that the other old park was kind of deteriorating, so they wanted to get it recovered," he said. "I watched them do some tricks on the old skateboard park, but this will be bigger and better designed."
The park itself is relatively small, but Steinhoff said Mayhew, who has been to thousands of skate parks from his days as a professional boarder and who keeps up with the local scene by operating the Alumni Boardshop on 2413 Allen Blvd. in Middleton, helped make the best use of the space.
"It's not the ideal layout for a skate park, but what we chose to put in it kind of replicates what the kids are skating if they go out," Mayhew said.
The layout for the park, called a "street park" because it mimics the urban spaces that skateboarders seek out, includes five stairs with a railing, ledges and banks/ramps with right-angle, or "hip" connections.
Mayhew is also working with the city's Central Park Design and Implementation Task Force to bring a 16,000-square-foot skate park to Madison's new central park. Ald. Joe Clausius, a member of the task force whose son was a semi-professional skateboarder, said the Goodman skate park is a great way to raise skateboarding's profile in the community now and to provide an alternative skateboarding spot even after the new park is built in a few years.
"We have no skateboard facility in Madison, so if that's going right along, great," he said. "That'll get more people exposed to it."
Mayhew, 33, said the skateboarding population is already growing in Madison, particularly as skateboarders from his generation begin teaching their children how to do it. He predicted the Goodman skate park would be popular not only with teens, but skateboarders of all ages and levels looking for a place to hone their skills.
"There's a lot of different things, but I think it will please the skaters like myself and the young kids, also. That's what the aim is for."
kristinc@madison.com
Cory Peterson
Dave Mayhew, shown here on Library Mall last year doing a kick flip, says the new skate park that he designed behind the Goodman Community Center mimics urban spaces that skateboarders often seek out.
