After years of work, Anchorage skaters welcome a new park

Anchorage skaters are getting a new park, set to unveil at the end of this month, that users say puts them in the big leagues with a deep concrete bowl, a whale tail-shaped quarter pipe, and a cast-in-concrete constellation on the floor in the shape of the Big Dipper.

The $2.1 million project, six years in the making, represents significant community investment for a sport the city previously didn’t have much to show for.

“Anchorage hasn’t had a skate park to this level,” said Anchorage skater Evan Sharp.

Sharp, 32, grew up skating the “dinky metal ramps” as a teenager at the former Taku Lake Skate Park, near Dimond Boulevard and C Street, before its renovation. Now, he said, the size and structure of the park, distinctly different from most of Anchorage’s makeshift, above-ground parks, presents terrain options for different skill levels that Anchorage skaters haven’t seen before: “Fifteen years later, it’s transformed into this amazing facility,” he said.

The newly renovated skate park also shows changing attitudes toward skateboarders themselves, a group that says they were once pigeonholed as outcast miscreants. The sport has since seen a major rebranding. Skateboarding made its Olympic debut at the 2020 Tokyo Summer Games, and was again on the world stage at the 2024 Paris Summer Games.

“I grew up when people hated skateboarding,” said Jason Borgstede, 49, a lifelong skater, former professional snowboarder and the owner of Anchorage’s Blue & Gold Boardshop.

In the early 2000s, Borgstede noticed skate parks cropping up across the country. By comparison, Anchorage had a couple temporary, prefabricated skate parks, where the city would set up wood or metal ramps on a hockey rink for the summer, and disassemble them in the fall and winter.

Currently, Anchorage still hosts a few of these skate parks: There’s an above-ground prefabricated park at the Spenard Recreation Center, and another constellation of ramps on a tennis court on Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson. In 2016, the city got its first in-ground, concrete skate park at Russian Jack Springs Park, but skaters say its poor design and small size make it difficult to skate without constantly stopping and starting.

“The problem with a fabricated skate park is it doesn’t show dedication from your community,” Borgstede said. “It’s not bringing kids in and asking them what they want and saying, ‘Here’s a concrete park to show you, metaphorically and literally, how solid we’re going to be for your group.’ ”

Anchorage skaters — including longboarders, roller skaters, BMXers and scooter kids — began asking for an in-ground skate park in 2018, when the Municipality of Anchorage’s Parks and Recreation Department led a massive planning process for renovations to Taku Lake Park.

The following year, the city partnered with a local nonprofit, the Anchorage Park Foundation, to begin public outreach and additional fundraising.

Borgstede secured an Anchorage Park Foundation challenge grant, and then set out with the skating community to raise $40,000 to meet the match requirement. Skaters held fundraising events, including an art auction at Anchorage Brewing Co. Kids got involved, too, scraping together $500 in the parking lot by offering tricks for cash tips.

“It really just takes a village to make this happen, and you can’t give up,” Borgstede said. In the end, the skaters raised close to $90,000 in matched funding to contribute to park construction.

“This was a really cool project that was very community driven,” said Parks and Recreation director Mike Braniff. “Anytime you get funding in the $90,000 range, it shows a really strong desire.”

Additional contributions for the park came from two Municipality of Anchorage bonds totaling $1.6 million, donations from the Anchorage Park Foundation and the Rasmuson Foundation, and a $10,000 grant from the Tony Hawk Foundation.

At the recommendation of several skaters, the city contracted Grindline, a design and construction company that specializes in concrete skate parks, to build the park. Grindline began laying concrete in fall 2023, delayed by the pandemic and the rising cost of construction materials, and handed off the completed project to the city earlier this month. Now, Braniff says the city is planning to finish landscaping in the area surrounding the park, ahead of its official opening on Sept. 29.

In the meantime, Anchorage skaters say they can’t wait to use their new park — and some really mean it. In the last several weeks since construction finished, skaters have been testing out the park, complete with night lights.

“The message is that people are excited about it, they’re excited to use it,” said Michelle LeBeau from the Anchorage Park Foundation, who has worked with the community on this project for the last five years.

Already, skaters are seeing the skill leaps a more sophisticated skate park ensures the next generation. Borgstede said his shop has also noticed an increase in orders for protective gear.

“This one is a lot nicer, (but) not as friendly to beginners,” 14-year-old Rodney Smith said of the new park. “But you can definitely learn here.”

Brendon Hupp, 32, who grew up skating in Anchorage but has lived out-of-state for seven years, has made a career of documenting others in the sport. Hupp is a skateboarding and snowboarding videographer, and said one of his goals is to show people that there is a vibrant skate community in the far north. Some of his work is featured alongside other Anchorage artists at the Anchorage Museum’s ”Northern Borders” exhibit, which showcases board culture in Alaska.

“It’s a great outlet and community,” Hupp said of the new skate park, which he specifically came home to see for himself. “I’m already seeing younger kids progress over the last four weeks.”

The skate park’s ribbon-cutting ceremony is free to attend, and will be held at 2 p.m. Sept. 29.