A decade ago, if you skateboarded in downtown Philly you might have well sewed a scarlet letter (or skateboard?) across your chest. The Street administration implanted metal cleats on railings and benches at Dilworth Plaza to deter skateboarders in March 2004. A couple of months later, the Street administration declined a $1M offer from a California company that offered the money in exchange for a ban on skating in Love Park to be lifted.

Despite all this, plans for a Franklin Paine’s Park skate park along the Schuylkill River were announced a year later. And a mere eight years after that announcement, Paine’s Park is more than halfway constructed, according to Claire Laver, executive director of Franklin’s Paine Skatepark Fund.

Construction shot

According to Laver, the park should be completed by late spring or early summer. Workers broke ground at the 2.5 acre site in mid-October. It marked the first physical work on the $4.5M plan, first conceptualized in 2002. When it was first announced, its projected cost was $2M. While a $100,000 grant from the Knight Arts Challenge helped facilitate this project, and other efforts by Franklin’s Paine to transform city blacktop into artistic skateparks, some final costs have surfaced. Those costs are enough to have inspired Laver and crew to launch a $10,000 Kickstarter campaign.

Another view, Art Museum in the background

“So far we’ve been running smooth but we need to raise a little more money,” said Laver. At the time of the writing of this post, the campaign, launched March 15th, had raised $6,654. It concludes April 3rd.

By the Ides of March, most of the foundation at Paine’s Park had been poured. Workers from the Washington-based GrindLine Skate Park have been on site since early February working on forming the skate park obstacles, according to Laver. Other elements, including landscaping, will be installed in the coming weeks.

Getting there...

When the park opens, expect large events like the Second Annual Philadelphia Cup Skateboarding series. According to Laver, the space has been designed with an eye on larger events and with the thought of attracting thousands of people to the site. Could this mean that something like the X Games Street competition could someday be held at Paine’s plaza? If one thing is certain, now that skateboarding is being more accepted in this town, it’s that building one of the nation’s largest skate plazas in such a prominent location, the city is continuing to celebrate and spread its cultural prowess. It’s something to be proud of.

Images taken from Paine’s Park Facebook page.

–Lou Mancinelli