Scrap Exchange, the longtime community reuse hub, is building a skate park in the Lakewood shopping center.
Heather Anne, interim executive director at the Scrap Exchange, says the plan for the new skate park involved “some divine timing.”
Scrap Exchange moved to Lakewood in 2014 with big plans for creating a “Reuse Arts District” that would revitalize the shopping district. In 2018, Scrap Exchange started working with folks in the community to sketch out a new skate park for the neighborhood, even raising funds to help implement the plan. But internal issues at the reuse hub stalled progress, and the skate park project was sidelined. A few years later, Anne stepped in as interim director and decided to revisit some of Scrap’s vision, including the skate park plans. She connected with Mike Johnston, owner of Manifest Skate Shop, who had an idea for how to jumpstart the process: Take unused skate park equipment from the Wheels Roller Skating Rink site and move it to Lakewood.
Johnston has been a mainstay of the Durham skate scene for years. He worked at Wheels as a staff member and summer camp counselor in high school, and remembers when the outdoor skate park was installed over a decade ago. Skaters used the park until the city bought the Wheels property in 2020 and temporarily closed off both the indoor rink and the park outside.
In late February, the city of Durham reopened Durham’s treasured indoor skating rink, but the outdoor skating area didn’t make the cut for rehabilitation. Parks and Recreation planned to “scrap” the materials (pun intended) until Johnston, who serves on the Recreation Advisory Commission, stepped in with a plan to rehome the collection of pipes and ramps in Lakewood. The list of equipment includes: two spine ramps, one mini ramp, one double pup hump, one long quarter pipe with channel gap, one small quarter pipe, one small bank, one multi-level long quarter pipe, one pyramid, and one bank to quarter pipe pyramid.
“It’s trash to the city,” Johnston says. “I don’t think they’re going to be guarding it in any way. They were going to auction it or trash it.”
State statute allows a city government to donate property to nonprofits if the city deems the property as “surplus, obsolete, or unused.” During a recent work session, the city’s Parks and Recreation department agreed to pass along old skate park materials leftover from Wheels to the Scrap Exchange, free of charge.
“This is a great partnership,” said council member Carl Rist during the meeting. “So great that, when I read the memo talking about spine ramps and double pump hump, I didn’t know what you were talking about but I knew it was exciting.”
Skate culture was an inescapable part of the counterculture punk movement that dominated the 90s and early aughts. X Games competitions were can’t miss television spectacles, and Tony Hawk rose to worldwide superstardom, launching one of the most successful video game franchises of all-time, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, which was played by heelflippers, nosegrinders and non-skaters alike.
Lately, skating has seen another uptick in popularity, especially during the COVID-19 lockdown when outdoor activities were some of the safest options for recreation. Johnston says that his shop saw their highest sales year to-date in 2020. The renewed interest in skating has also led to a proliferation of “DIY” parks, skate parks built by skaters themselves often on abandoned or private property due to the lack of public skate facilities available. Recreation departments have started to take notice. Now, cities like Charlotte and Raleigh are partnering with skaters to move away from temporary pop-up parks toward permanent facilities.
The relocated skate park equipment from Wheels will be nestled in a section of parking lot between the main Scrap Exchange building and the end of the strip that includes the Scrap’s thrift shop. The lot is sloped so the surface will need to be leveled out to fully accommodate most of the new skate park.
“Disassembling and transporting the materials is going to be a pretty gnarly project,” Johnston says. “But we have the skate community and the people around Scrap Exchange, so we have a lot of people who would volunteer time and effort to make that happen.”
The materials will be officially conveyed to Scrap Exchange at the start of the May 19 city council meeting. Johnston says folks are eager to get the equipment in-hand so the moving process can begin. There are still a few logistics to work out, like liability insurance, but Johnston and Anne are optimistic they will be able to get things rolling quickly. Phase one is getting the 20-foot half-pipe, the only one of its kind in Durham, operational.
“The main focus is going to be getting that mini ramp reassembled,” Johnston says. “We don’t have a half-pipe at [the Durham Central Park] skate park, so it’s going to be popping off right away.”
The project harkens back to the history of Lakewood Shopping Center. At the turn of the last century, Richard Wright, a longtime business partner of the Duke family, bought a streetcar system from the city and developed the Lakewood Amusement Park at the end of the route to gin up ridership. The park included a merry-go-round, roller coaster—and a skating rink.
“You could rent skates, which cost 25 cents an hour,” the Open Durham page reads. “At times professional skaters would come in and do all types of tricks on roller skates.”
Lakewood has a long history at the center of arts and commerce. In 1960, the district became the “Shoppes at Lakewood” and featured a popular movie theater. But by the 2000s, the district hit a decline as consumer behavior shifted to newer business districts like Northgate and Southpoint Mall.
Relocating Scrap Exchange to Lakewood as its anchor tenant brought a resurgence to the district, even if the vision for that resurgence isn’t quite what Scrap leadership planned for when it first landed in 2014. A growing roster of tenants have shifted the district from reuse to “taking care of people,” as Anne puts it. Radical Healing, El Futuro, the Solidarity Hub, and a satellite clinic for Lincoln Community Health Center are all open on the east side of Lakewood that Scrap Exchange owns. The demographics of the neighborhood have also shifted; the shopping center caters to a growing population of Latino residents.
“What is our [board and team’s] role in acknowledging and embracing that, and how do we wrap some of the things that are in our mission into that and envision something new?” Anne says.
The new Scrap skate park is a perfect encapsulation of how the old vision and new reality can work in harmony, Anne says.
“This feels like such an obvious choice. There are unclaimed materials that the community would love to put into use, and it’s a part of the community that’s looking for something to do. It’s a source of joy, mental health, and outdoor activity for so many people. It just feels like a duh.”
The skate park isn’t the only new feature coming to Lakewood in the coming months. Suite 33, the last commercial unit on the strip, is a 4,000 square-foot warehouse space that Scrap Exchange has recently opened up as another DIY space for things like open mics and other creative programming. The once-lively shopping center that played host to amusement park rides and a movie theater is starting to see a return to its roots while still keeping an eye on the future.
“The lack of things to do in that part of the mall has been a constant conversation since I’ve stepped in,” Anne says. “By 6 p.m., it’s pretty much crickets down on that path. It’s a great place to go whip shitties in a truck, but there’s not actually people coming in there and doing anything. Having the skate park, having a space with events going on will make it more inviting and bring in more people.”
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