This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, April 1, 2011 - It's amazing how far one bag of concrete can go.
What started as a sort of renegade skateboard park under the Kingshighway bridge -- the builders began the project without city permission -- is quickly transforming into a legitimate community-based movement to develop appealing garden-style skateparks throughout the city.
It all started nearly two years ago under the bridge, which is near Daggett in south St. Louis, with a do-it-yourself project that converted a grimy industrial-feeling area into a clean, destination skate spot. The group has since secured a lawyer, formed a nonprofit corporation, has regular planning meetings, organizes fundraisers and is currently polishing a PowerPoint presentation to shop around its garden park idea to neighborhood associations and aldermen.
All this planning isn't for expansion. The crumbling Kingshighway bridge is coming down in the next two to three years.
"I guess it kinda sucks because we put so much time and effort into it, but I guess it's a good thing because now we know what we're doing completely and we can start all over with something new," said Adam McKee, 19, of Kirkwood, one of the park's founders. "Things will progress a lot faster than they did with Kingshighway."
The city's Streets Director Todd Waelterman said he and the skaters are discussing possible relocation spots.
"The general feel of the city is we should try to work with these guys and come up with something," Waelterman said.
Shaping a DIY Park
Like most skate spots, the Kingshighway park attracted more skaters as word spread. Bryan Bedwell, 30, of St. Louis, was one of those skaters -- and the one who brought experience and connections. Bedwell is president of the KHVT board (short for Kings Highway Vigilante Transitions). He and another KHVT board member, J.P. Kraus, have been building for the past three years a private concrete skatepark in Hermann, called Hermann's Hole. Some of their friends run a company called Show Me Pools that builds professional skateparks across the country, and who helped them out with Kingshighway.
"We saw the opportunity underneath the bridge to jump in and help these guys out, and we all are from around here so we thought this was a great opportunity for us to get involved," Bedwell said.
The Kingshighway group raised about $4,000 in nearly two years. As the fundraising picked up, they quit using bags of concrete and switched to trucks. Overall, Bedwell estimates they've put down 20 to 25 yards of concrete under the bridge, which equates to about four to five trucks worth.
He said community support came in the form of cheap materials, especially after they posted items they needed on their website, such as rebar and fill.
They painted over the graffiti and picked up the trash. The city brought a dumpster and even gave the skaters leftover concrete after shoring up a few of the pillars.
McKee said his first attempt at building a DIY skatepark in Kirkwood lasted about a week before it was bulldozed. So, he and some friends started looking elsewhere.
Nearly two years ago, Kyle Crandall, 20, of Kirkwood, said he was cruising around in search of a skate spot when he found the Kingshighway spot. He and McKee built a small angle-iron ledge under the bridge and later smoothed cement up to a jersey barrier.
"We figured no one would really care if we found a good spot in the city that no one was using," McKee said.
Finding a New Home
Ward 10 Alderman Joseph Vollmer, whose ward shares a piece of the Kingshighway skatepark along with the 8th Ward, said the skateboarders need to find an appropriate property, one that takes its surroundings into consideration.
"A more commercial or industrial setting is going to allow more freedom for them," Vollmer said. "The closer you get to residential properties, then you have the problem with noise. It would have to be a setting, not exactly like they have now, but something that would be more of an industrial area without having to fence the thing and lock it up every night. As I tell anyone who wants to do something, imagine if you have to live next door to it."
Vollmer said any type of lease agreement or sale depends on the location.
"There are records of things being sold for a dollar," he said. "There are things being leased for a dollar or minimal fees. It's contingent upon a contract of what's going to be done with the property, what kind of investment is going to be made and where it's going to be. That's completely wide open now."
Including the Community, Breaking Barriers
The Kingshighway group met and agreed to focus on three wards -- the 10th, 17th and 6th -- for the initial phase of their plan for a skate garden. They gathered contact information for the appropriate aldermen and neighborhood associations they plan to approach.
Ultimately they'll take their plan to the city with the understanding that the skaters will implement and fund the project themselves. The idea is to have one main park in the middle of the city with smaller parks spread out and connected to a series of adjacent obstacles.
"We're getting ready to get some big corporation-type sponsors, hopefully," Bedwell said. "Once the city agrees to what we're proposing, they're going to start flowing in. There's going to be people that want to sponsor us."
The idea is to create a community project with small skateparks and incorporate gardens, decorative concrete and tile.
"Basically we're using that to try and draw other people other than skateboarders into the project. That way we can get the entire community involved instead of being just for skaters," Bedwell said. "On top of that it'll also break down social barriers that have been created between skateboarders and everybody else."
The group is already sending out feelers, starting with a meeting Tuesday with Dan Krasnoff, executive director of Park Central Development in the 17th Ward. They have another meeting scheduled for April with the Tower Grove South neighborhood group.
Krasnoff said he was impressed with the group's professionalism. However, the onus is on the skaters to sell their plan.
"I was impressed by the level of organization (Bedwell) has and his sort of vision, but because we believe in community-based decision making, the idea for a skatepark in the 17th Ward has not been presented to any of our neighborhood groups and before we would support anything like that it would need to be reviewed by them," Krasnoff said.
Park Central is a neighborhood development corporation that represents the entire 17th Ward, which includes the southern half of the Central West End, Forest Park Southeast and the Botanical Heights neighborhoods.
Krasnoff said skateparks tend to make people feel uneasy, but he could not say whether there was reluctance among his constituents because they've never reviewed such a project.
The Bridge
Vollmer said the new design for the bridge calls for eliminating the openings under the Kingshighway bridge, except for space for the railroad tracks and a cul-de-sac near Daggett Avenue. The bridge itself will be replaced from Interstate 44 to Vandeventer Avenue and widened to six lanes of traffic with bike and pedestrian lanes. The side streets will be eliminated.
"If there are people who are enjoying the city in one way or another, you want to make that continue to happen. We're not tearing the bridge down to get rid of the skaters. We're tearing the bridge down because it's very dangerous," Vollmer said.
The bridge itself is still in the design phase and negotiations are beginning for property acquisitions, Vollmer said. He said $22 million has been appropriated for the project with a mix of federal and railroad funds. The city is budgeting $3.5 million for designs, with $2.8 million coming from the federal government and $700,000 from Union Pacific Railroad.
Waelterman said the city is selecting a consultant to design the bridge project. Plus, he said, about six property owners are affected by the project and the city needs to buy property. Overall, he said the project is two to three years out from beginning.
"I don't picture this as a real quick process," Waelterman said.
He said the skaters, for the most part, are accepted there. Their work on the park reduced the dumping and covered up the graffiti. Complaints that skaters had vandalized a nearby abandoned building turned out to be unfounded, said Waelterman.
"There is a transient population around there," he said. "It hasn't been pain-free, but it has been a working relationship."
Waelterman supports relocating the skaters to another city-owned property.
"If we can take something we have that's bad and they can turn it into something positive, that's a big winner for all of us," he said.
Matthew Bird-Meyer is a graduate intern from the University of Central Missouri in Warrensburg.