There’s a place in Tinley Park where kids gather to break the law.
The place is the Park District’s new skate park. And the law the kids are flouting is that of gravity.
The scofflaws in helmets and knee pads use skateboards and in-line roller skates to fly up ramps and soar into the air, joyously defying earth’s pull, if only momentarily.
It is a good bet, however, that most of those enjoying the park don’t realize that it was a group of kids like themselves who played an important role in making the park happen.
It was just a couple years ago that Kevin Dunn and a small entourage of fellow skateboard enthusiasts would regularly show up at the meetings of the Tinley Park Park District’s Board of Commissioners with a single purpose: to lobby for a skateboard park.
As it turned out, Dunn’s persistence and the willingness of Park District officials to take the request seriously paid off for the youths.
The requests resulted in the opening last summer of the skate park, which is becoming known as one of the finest facilities of its kind in the Chicago area.
Creating an attraction
The skate park, situated behind a baseball field at McCarthy Park, 16801 S. 80th Ave., features six skate structures of various ramps and platforms on a concrete pad.
The area is fenced but when weather permits it is open daily from early morning until dusk. And during those times it is alive with speeding daredevils.
“The amount of kids that are out there totally blew me away,” said Brian Younker, park board president.
“It’s a non-stop flow of kids day in and day out. Personally I kind of thought that skateboarding had kind of died off, but I guess I’m getting old because without a doubt it’s still around and going strong–at least in Tinley Park.”
“Out of all the parks in the area it’s one of the best,” said Randy Korwin, an employee and member of the skateboard team from Bad Boyz Toys, an Orland Park sports shop.
The process was direct enough; it just took patience and persistence. And it has been a textbook example of how government is supposed to work.
“Some of my friends started a petition in our school that everybody signed,” Dunn said.
“Then after we got that together, we started going to meetings together.”
At each session, Dunn would wait until the citizen participation portion of the park board meeting and respectfully ask what the outlook was for a skateboard facility.
Although Dunn did the talking for the group, he balks at the suggestion that meant he was its leader.
“All of us worked together equally on it,” Dunn said.
“I can’t say I was the spokesman for it; I just kind of was the one who spoke.”
Admiration for teen
“I give him credit,” said Younker. “You don’t see too many kids in high school come to a government meeting, and if they do usually they’ll complain or say something that they want and that’s it. After they came the first time I honestly never thought they would come again. But they were an organized group of kids, and I was impressed with their commitment. And I think those things did speed up the process of getting the skate park built.”
Dunn and his group were treated seriously. Parks director John Curran explained the priority was to first secure funding for a new permanent recreation center and outline where a skate park fit in with overall plans.
“A lot depended on whether a referendum passed [in March 2000] for our new building because if it hadn’t, then money had to be put toward other things,” said Sandy Chevalier, superintendent of recreation.
“Sometime after it did pass we contacted all the kids that were in this group–we probably had a dozen at first–and asked them to attend a meeting with myself and John to find out what they were looking for in a skate park,” Chevalier said.
Involving the skaters was in keeping with Park District policy.
“For instance, when we redo a park we always seek out the community’s input,” said Younker. “We like to find out what equipment they want and even the color schemes they think would be good. For the skate park, finding out what the skaters wanted only made sense because, you know, I don’t think our Park District staff is into skateboarding.”
That fit with Dunn’s way of thinking as well.
“There are a lot of skateboard parks around here but none of them are very good because they don’t take any skater input whatsoever,” Dunn said. “Because they basically just ignore input from skaters, they end up with lousy parks.”
“We let them do a preliminary design of what they wanted in a skate park and I contacted some different companies getting some price quotes on that preliminary drawing just to see what we were looking at in cost and see if it were feasible for us to do,” Chevalier said. “Over probably at least a year, different designs were developed and we looked at the different kinds of materials that could be used. We also went as a group to visit some different local skate parks to see what apparatus they had and how they were run.”
When a manufacturer from Minnesota was settled on, Chevalier arranged for a representative to visit with Dunn and his group.
“We wanted to challenge the kids a bit and kind of tweak up the design a little to see if it could be a little more functional,” Chevalier said.
The park ended up being more ambitious than envisioned. In the end, nearly two dozen skateboard and in-line skaters were involved in the park’s design.
“At first we were just hoping for something,” said Dunn. “But once we got to laying things out it turned out to be exactly what we wanted.”
“The price quotes on the first design that the kids did came back about $36,000,” Chevalier said. “The total cost ended up being $159,000, so that tells you how we changed things a lot.”
Something for everyone
The final tab includes not only the six skate ramp structures, which cost $84,000, but also the concrete pad and surrounding fence.
“Along the way we added some larger, more challenging pieces. We wanted to make it functional for all levels, from beginners to advanced. We didn’t just want to cater to one specific level,” Chevalier said.
The skate park opened July 3 and its reputation is growing. Like surfers who seek a beach with ideal waves, Tinley’s skate park has become a destination for skaters from beyond Tinley’s borders.
“Last summer I would go down there and just watch,” Chevalier said. “You could tell some of the kids were from our neighborhoods, but we were getting kids from all over. We’ve even had kids take the train from Indiana and get off at the 80th Avenue [Metra] Station and then skateboard down here because they’ve heard our skate park is kind of unique.”
And Dunn could not be more pleased.
“Right now everybody’s completely satisfied with how great the park is,” Dunn said. “I think one key to things working out the way they did was having so many kids behind what we were doing. And I would ask other Park District leaders to follow Tinley’s example and listen to what the kids want. I think that just makes sense because they know a lot more about it than somebody who doesn’t skate.”
Kevin Dunn
Achievement: Led the effort to establish the skate park at 16801 S. 80th Ave. for skateboarders and inline skaters.
Age: 17
Background: Lifelong resident of Tinley Park. Graduate of Grissom Junior High School and of Andrew High School in January. Currently working until resuming his education in the fall.
Skateboarding background: Began about six years ago. Skates in the new park he helped establish about three or four times a week when weather permits. “But for the most part we still skate street.”
Evaluation of the skate park experience: “I thought it actually turned out to be easier than I thought it would be. [Tinley Park Park District Parks and Recreation Director] John Curran was real into our idea and went all out for us.”
Advice to others planning skate parks: “I would ask other park leaders to follow Tinley’s example and listen to what the kids want. I think that just makes sense because the kids know a lot more about it than somebody who doesn’t skate.”
