How a World Class Skatepark Came to Wheeling
This was the question I sought to answer after visiting the unlikely and kind of unbelievable skate park here in the City of Wheeling.
To laymen, the bowl at the Wheeling Skatepark is intimidating, with only a few feet separating you from a drop into the smooth concrete basin below. Perhaps too, this bowl is at first startling to those who dare drop in to surf its ebb and flow. And even beyond this rippling pool there lies banks, rails and ledges across the 10,000-square-foot park where, since 2007, the sound of engine brakes ripping down the steep grade of I-470 dissolves any paralyzing trance preventing skaters from pushing their boundaries.
In 2001, nothing of the sort existed in Wheeling. Just two years after Tony Hawk landed his famous 900 at the X Games, skateboarding, a sport that found its bearings in the 50s and 60s, had made its revolution from popular culture, to underground, back to the mainstream again. Yet despite its rising popularity, skaters still existed outside of acceptable society, with their typical “outcast punk” stereotype leaving them on the fringe of priorities for most cities’ recreational planning. So, when 12-year-old Nate Mey complained to his mother about not having anywhere to skate in Wheeling, she responded, “Well, you can either whine about it, or you can do something about it.”
Diana Mey, 65, was quick to guide her son to a solution. She recommended that he make his plea for a skatepark to the Wheeling City Council, to which they suggested the creation of a grassroots group that could garner support and raise funds for the project. Soon after, the Wheeling Skatepark Committee was formed, and thus began a six-year campaign to build West Virginia’s first municipal skatepark spearheaded by a woman who knew that “all you have to do is unite behind an idea, and absolutely believe in it.”
With the goal of providing the best for the Ohio Valley’s skateboarders, it was established early on that the park would be professionally constructed with cast-in-place concrete, meaning that it would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Diana armed herself with all the facts regarding the positive benefits of skateparks and began speaking to every civic organization in town to educate the public and bring awareness to the cause. She also taught herself how to write grants, which would be crucial in securing money from Tony Hawk’s nonprofit organization, The Skatepark Project.
As irony would have it, Diana’s son, Nate, lost interest in skateboarding a year or two into the campaign; but, her eyes were already opened. “I started to see these kids," she said. Disillusioned with the organized sports culture that inundates the Ohio Valley, her mission was set on finding a place for the kids who didn’t seem to fit in with the regular crowd, especially considering that skateboarding is banned in Downtown Wheeling per the city code. “I just became a big advocate for that population, because I felt they were so underrepresented,” she said.
Although Nate had moved on to other activities, he never gave up on the cause. Upon learning that country superstar and Glen Dale native Brad Paisley liked skateboarding, Nate wrote him a letter. Brad responded with a hefty donation. This brought a new level of attention to the campaign, and eased any doubts still held by the community. “His endorsement brought tons of people on board,” Diana said.
Regardless of the naysaying and hate mail received by the committee, Diana ultimately credits the support from the citizens of Wheeling for the success of the campaign. “The beauty of it is, we had companies in Wheeling that would write $100 checks, or write $50 checks,” Diana recalled. “All those things added up. It really showed that there was a lot of support from everybody in the community; we were grateful.”
As the donation and grant money grew, the Wheeling Skatepark Committee partnered with the Community Foundation for the Ohio Valley, which enabled the group to apply, and ultimately receive, a substantial $100,000 grant from the Land & Water Conservation Fund. In 2006, after years of research, monthly meetings, car wash fundraisers, speaking events, grant applications, letter writing campaigns, and a whole lot of conviction, nearly $500,000 dollars was raised, and the bidding process could begin.
Grindline, a world-renowned skatepark construction company based out of Seattle, Wash., was selected for the job. Skateboarders themselves, the Grindline workers held community meetings to learn what features the locals desired, and it was decided that the park would be 60% bowl and 40% street elements. The city and the committee chose an accessible location in Elm Grove at the bottom of the hill leading up to the I-470 ballfields, directly across from the Wheeling Creek Trail, and just below the Hil-Dar public housing complex. In June of 2007, ground was broken, and the empty grassy knoll was carved out with excavators.
An excavator can be see moving the ground to make way for concrete and the wooden molds that shape the park. Photos provided by Diana Mey.
Local skaters gathered at the site to watch the bare land be transformed into an impressive concrete sculpture. One of those kids was Nic Fledderus, 31, a person who, despite being fully engulfed in the “do-no-good” skater culture from a young age, ended up pretty well — he currently works as a transfusion nurse at Reynolds Memorial Hospital, where he administers chemo and other blood transfusion therapies.
“When I was in middle school, we would skate down there as a crew after school and go help these guys. They relied on a lot of us young people, like, moving wood, and I remember people finishing concrete.” With each step, the Grindline builders shared valuable knowledge about masonry work, skateboarding techniques, and general decorum of the park — knowledge that transgresses far past the concrete. “It was one of those things that happened then, and it'll never happen again,” Nic said of this special moment in time.
On October 21, 2007, hundreds of skateboarders and community members gathered at the Wheeling Skatepark for the official ribbon cutting ceremony. After a long day of being forced to cut grass with his brothers, Nic took a few simple words to describe the day. “Oh, dude, it was amazing.” Professionals gathered to test and demonstrate the limits of the park while beginners got to scoot around in a bowl for the first time. Unfortunately, police presence was also required that day.
Due to the limitations of the park’s size, city management and the Skatepark Committee decided that it would be too dangerous to allow bikes to ride in the park. “If you think of the momentum of an adult riding these bikes down into the bowl, and the speed they can reach… [this] presented a safety hazard for the young kids that would have been skating there,” Diana explained. This decision brought literal death threats against Diana, and the anger came to a head on the day of the opening with BMX bikers protesting the festivity. Undeterred by the rules, a few bikers took their wheels to the concrete and were promptly arrested. “It was a day with very mixed emotions. Yes, I was very happy that we had done what we had done. But as you can imagine, that was a bit of a damper,” she said.
Nic's (seen here in a red shirt and blue hat) Eagle Scout project was the installation of bleachers and a flag pole at the park. Photos provided by Nic Fledderus.
Now 17 years since its completion, the Wheeling Skatepark is not as frequented as it once was, but it is still deeply loved and skated by its stewards, with skate montages being regularly filmed and shared. It’s clean and cared for, with the only graffiti of permanence spelling out “BOYER,” a lost member of the tight knit Ohio Valley skater community. Every year there are skate trick contests, music festivals, hangouts and memorials, many of which are hosted by Nic’s community group, OVSK8FAM.
Nic would like to see the skatepark expand to include a flat concrete slab where beginners can learn to maneuver on a skateboard before moving on to the more technical aspects of the sport. The park remains without permanent bathrooms, although it does feature a single porta potty, and a questionable water fountain. He also mentioned that, despite the park being under the City’s purview, he has struggled to get city administration’s full attention on its needed upkeep.
“You know, the city invested so much money, and there's so much money given to this place,” Nic said. “I've talked to a couple people about, like, resurfacing areas, or investing in lighting, or other infrastructure in that general area. And just, like, no one even listens to me,” he expressed, noting that the bowl will need work “if they want it around for another 10-15 years.”
And, there’s good reason to keep the park maintained and rideable for our citizens, even though skateboarding isn’t as big as it used to be here in the Ohio Valley. The population has declined, people have moved away, and local skaters have grown older. But globally, the sport is at its height. Four years ago, skateboarding made its Olympic debut, and tens of millions of people participate worldwide. Professional skateboarders and skate artists and photographers have risen from the Ohio Valley before, like Dave Coyne, O.J. Hays, and Luke McKaye — so who’s to say it won’t happen again?
On a more general level, there are countless lessons to be learned from the vantage point of a skate deck, many of which have guided skaters when there was no one else around to provide counsel. “It teaches kids from a young age that failure is inevitable, and that's a huge part of life – falling down and getting back up, and just trying it again and just keeping on, keeping on,” Nic said.
At its core, skating is about finding balance and learning to stand on your own two feet while everything else is moving around you. As Nic said, failure is inevitable. But giving up is a death sentence. So, throw a prayer to the shoes hanging on the power line, and drop in.
You can check out what’s happening at the skatepark by taking a peak through this 24/7 webcam run by the City.
The Wheeling Skatepark Committee members: Diana Mey, Nate Mey, Jonathan Dickerson, Kathi Fader, Tyler Fader, Cheryl Kaczor, Shari Kresen, Stephen Kresen, Bryan Murray, Susie Nelson, David Perri.
 | A guest post by
|
Thanks for the nice article. It’s one of my favorite places.
I've admired the skatepark all the times I've driven by it but never knew how much went into getting it created.