When Graveside DIY, a community-built skate park located on a privately owned lot in southwest Raleigh, was demolished in 2025, the skaters who made it a community felt lost.
“We feel like we’ve been wandering in the desert this past year,” said Aaron Collins, who helped build many of the ramps at Graveside. “It’s been awful, but finally, finally we’ll be able to build a Raleigh skate park.”
In March 2025, Collins and some other skateboarders approached the Raleigh City Council to ask them to help them find a new space where they could build a city-sanctioned skate park. The council members were on board, so to speak, and connected them with city staff members who could help.
After working with the city’s Parks and Recreation Department over the past year, the skaters’ request has become a reality: There’s an agreement in place, the city confirmed, and construction is expected to begin on a new DIY skate park in Jaycee Park—on a site that formerly stored dumpsters—late this summer.
“Raleigh Parks is excited to collaborate with another community based skate group,” said Stephen Bentley, the city’s parks director, in an email. “Partnerships like this create greater opportunities for skateboarding, roller skating and other wheeled opportunities in the City.”
It’s been a long journey to get here. Graveside DIY started out as a closely guarded secret back in 2016, a concrete-and-asphalt, 13-acre plot of land surrounded by woods, a creek, and an old cemetery just south of Tryon Road. The site became a free-for-all during the pandemic years as more and more skaters used it and built more and more obstacles and ramps. Before it was demolished, Graveside DIY featured a six-foot tall ramp known as the Punk Wall, a rainbow coping quarter pipe, and a loop. At the end of 2024, the Islamic Association of Raleigh, the property’s owner, sold it to a developer to build townhomes. The skate park was demolished soon after.
Many of the Graveside crew and other local skateboarders wanted to find a permanent space and a way to try to recapture some of Graveside DIY’s magic. Following their public comments to the Raleigh City Council, Paul Thompson, a longtime skateboarder who grew up in Raleigh, took the lead on the conversations with city officials.
The skaters incorporated as a nonprofit, East Coast DIY Skatepark Foundation, and met with parks staff to figure out site and insurance logistics. The group will submit drawings to the city, and once they’re approved—and once the nonprofit raises enough money—construction on the skate park can begin.
“The whole City Council just got behind it and put us in touch with the right people, and they were all for it,” Thompson said. “It feels good to partner with somebody that you feel like you can have a comfortable relationship with.”
Collins and Thompson said the group needs to raise money to buy tools and construction materials and they’re in need of a shipping container for storage during the building process. There’s currently a GoFundMe with a goal of $40,000 for the first phase of the skate park, and the group is accepting material and other donations.
The final result will be a DIY skate park that everyone can use, with everything from features for beginners to more challenging features for more advanced skaters. It will be lit at night to stay open in line with the park’s hours. Most importantly, and unlike Graveside DIY and other DIY spots that have come and gone over the years, the Jaycee DIY skate park will be permanent.
“We’ve always had revolving doors of these DIY spots, like all over the place,” Thompson said. “There used to be one on N.C. State’s campus. There was one out in Chapel Hill on some tennis courts. There was one at the old prison that was right next to the art museum. They’ve been all over, and they always get torn down. … So I’ve just been frustrated not having that. We need something for the future generations.”
If you want to donate to the upcoming Jaycee DIY skate park or otherwise get involved, email East Coast DIY Skatepark Foundation.
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