Tucson's first shaded skate park is coming soon just west of downtown 🛹

One of Tucson’s oldest streets, Cushing Street near downtown, has seen significant change and growth over the last 100 years.

From the days of horse-pulled carriages in the 1800s to the interstate becoming a steady fixture above the street in the 1950s to the Sun Link streetcar gliding through in the 2010s — Cushing Street and its surrounding areas have just about seen it all.

Now, a section along the historical street will soon go through another round of change as it’s set to become the city’s first shaded skate park.

The skate park, set to be built in a vacant lot off Cushing Street directly below the Interstate 10 overpass, will include a cactus-shaped pump bump, a pool coping pocket, plenty of rails and ledges, and a mural wall.

Construction on the park is estimated to start this fall, according to Greg Jackson, the deputy director of the City of Tucson Parks and Recreation Department.

In the last year, community efforts behind the Cushing Street Skate Park ramped up again in hopes of finally pushing the project forward — many years after the idea was pitched at a Tucson City Council meeting in 2016 by local skateboarders Caleb Gutierrez and Kyle Araishi.

Gutierrez, who then worked at the Vans shoe store in Tucson Mall, submitted the idea for the Cushing Street Skate Park to the Vans Passion Project contest, which provided grants for creatives to bring their passion projects to life.

Gutierrez was selected as a winner, but there was just one little problem: he couldn’t receive the funds because he needed project approval from the local government.

Instead of hitting the hurdle and giving up, Gutierrez did what any determined young adult in their 20s would do — he grabbed a friend and headed to a city council meeting.

“I just want to emphasize why the skate park could be good,” Araishi said at the city council meeting in 2016. “It's just like, the weather, you know, it gets hot out, it's too bright during the day. So, skating Santa Rita (skate park) and other places is really hard. Having something under a cover would be great and everything. And it's also right by the light rail and everything, making it easy (and) accessible for people to get to. We need another (skate) park here in Tucson.”

Following the meeting, then councilwoman and current Tucson Mayor Regina Romero took an interest in the project.

“The most interesting part of this process ... is for the skating community and these young men to be able to go through the actual process of getting something done in their community,” she told the Arizona Daily Star in 2017.

After that city council meeting in 2016, Gutierrez and Araishi were onto the next steps of the project. They met with government agencies such as the Arizona Department of Transportation, City of Tucson Parks and Recreation and other city administrators, according to the Star.

The project eventually received approval and gained a large supportive following from numerous community members including photographer and Etherton Gallery manager Shannon Smith, the Tucson Skate Park Alliance and the City Council Ward 1 office.

With the project gaining so much momentum in its beginning stages, why did it slow down?

Life happened.

In 2018, Gutierrez moved to Mexico City for a new job. A global pandemic struck two years later. Plus, tons of planning, budgeting and surveys needed to be complete for the project to reach fruition.

Araishi is no longer directly involved with the project but remains good friends with Gutierrez and says he still supports the skate park and looks forward to its completion.

“So, the pandemic happened and it died down again,” Gutierrez said. “Now, it's been two years (since the last update meeting) and Shannon and I have been talking since October or September saying, ‘We have to bring this back to life.’ There's so much (happening). The city is changing. Buildings are being built, new hotels, new everything, new streets. It’s been almost eight years, so let's see what we could do.

“We’ve been brainstorming and it led to sitting here giving an interview for the first time in I don't know how long.”

Funding Tucson's first shaded skate park

Funding is yet another thing that has contributed to the delay of the project. In 2017, Gutierrez and crew raised around $3,000 of the then-estimated $90,000 needed to complete the skate park, the Star reported.

However, that number has since drastically increased over the last several years. The current estimate is around $1.8 million.

Currently, they've raised almost $1.1 million of the $1.8 million needed.

Of the nearly $1.1 million earmarked for the project, $500,000 comes from Prop 407, a $225 million bond package that passed in 2018 to help improve City of Tucson park amenities; $300,000 comes from a grant received from the Tohono O’odham Nation; and $250,000 comes from Ward 1 funding from Budget de la Gente, according to Kristin McRay, the community infrastructure manager for Ward 1.

The project has also received around $42,000 in individual donations, according to Jackson.

Because the project has received over $1 million in funding, the design and construction phases can move forward. The Parks and Recreation department expects to have the “100% plans” for the park finalized in May, Jackson says.

“We would expect to have a construction contract in place by July,” he said. “Right now, we would hope to be under construction in September.”

The Parks and Recreation department, along with the Cushing Street Skate Park crew, have worked closely with Grindline, a company based in Seattle that specializes in designing skate parks, to develop a concept for the project.

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“What we build in Phase 1 will definitely be a usable skatepark,” Jackson said. “One of the slight challenges of this project is we have to include a restroom in Phase 1 because we couldn't realistically build the skate park and not have a restroom down there for kids and adults to use and so, unfortunately, that’s a fairly big ticket item around $300,000 or $400,000 just for a restroom. So, that's eaten a part of the project, but there was no way we could build a skate park without having the restroom down there.”

Phase 2, Jackson says, will include more amenities. But for now, the focus is getting the skate park up and running with proper lighting and restrooms.

“These construction documents are going to help us figure out how much of that we're gonna be able to build,” he said. “Is it going to be half of it? Is it this half? Is it up and down half? Those are the kinds of things we'll have to work through with the contractor probably at 100% (plans) to figure out what we're gonna be able to build based on funding in here.”

Finding funds for the Cushing Street Skate Park hasn’t just been a governmental effort, with people like Jackson seeking out grants for the project. Local supporters and organizers, like Smith, have worked diligently to get the word out, too.

In 2018, Etherton Gallery, where Smith works, exhibited skateboard art with part of the proceeds directly benefiting the Cushing Street project, the gallery wrote on Facebook. 

The Cushing Street crew have also raised money by creating fun merchandise like trucker hats and T-shirts and they've hosting raffles and benefit concerts. One of the more recent benefits happened at Che’s Lounge on Fourth Avenue and raised around $4,000, according to Smith.

People can also make a tax-deductible donation through the City of Tucson online. The Cushing Street Skate Park project should be the first option on the list. (If you’re on mobile, you may need to zoom out to access the donation page.)

Not all of the community efforts have been for financial support, though. Some have helped bring attention to the area while raising awareness about the project. One of these efforts was the Cushing Street Skate Park Portrait Project.

For the portrait project, Smith took photos of 69 members affiliated with the local skateboarding community, including Gutierrez, Yasmynn “Ylo” Lopez of the BABS skateboarding crew, current Vice Mayor Lane Santa Cruz and Smith’s son, Dillinger.

Smith and local community members installed the monochromatic images underneath the I-10 overpass along Cushing Street a couple years ago. Some of the portraits can still be seen today.

“It's been cool to watch other skaters. And even with my kid, they're just so supportive,” Smith said. “If he's having a hard day at school, he would just go to the skate park. I’d get him in the car and see all his frustration and would take him there and that would fix everything. It really would.

“I remember when this (project) started. My kid, I think he was nine and in middle school … (and recently) I was like, ‘Is he really gonna graduate high school before it's built?’”

A community connection several years in the making

Cushing Street Skate Park is set to become the first shaded skate park in Tucson — but for local skaters, it’s so much more.

The shaded spot is not just a recreational request but a necessity given the nearly unbearable summers that bring heat over 110 degrees.

“The sun, we all know what it feels like,” Gutierrez said. “Nobody wants to do anything in that weather. We went down there before to do temperature tests in the shade in the middle of summer just to get a rough estimate of being ‘OK, it's 100 (degrees) out, it's 2 p.m. on a Sunday. Let's go see how it feels down there right now.’ Just standing down there and it would drop, like, 30 degrees. You could definitely escape in there in the middle of summer.”

While the heat was a major factor in developing the concept of a shaded skate park, Gutierrez says he was also inspired by shaded skate parks under freeways in major cities like San Francisco's SoMa West Skatepark. 

“This will be our version in the desert,” he said.

Based on a survey conducted by the Parks and Recreation Department, many respondents seem in favor of a skate park on Cushing Street. Out of 328 responses, 290 voted “yes” while 38 voted “no,” according to the survey.

For decades, Cushing Street has acted as a portal to help connect some of the city’s barrios like Barrio Viejo to central Tucson. Many communities have called this area home. 

“This project is so important, not just because of the uniqueness of the park and how that activates our youth community but also where this project is — under the highway,” McRay said in an email. “Highways, historically, have divided communities and cut through neighborhoods of color and Tucson is no exception. Part of the reason this project is so important is that it's activating underutilized space and re-establishing lost community connections between the west and east side of the I-10.” 

Once the Cushing Street Skate Park is complete, the city’s tight-knit skateboarding community will be able to call the area a second home.

Tucson’s skate scene is a diverse community filled with people from all backgrounds including kiddos who may be picking up a skateboard for the first time to veterans who have years of experience under their belt. 

Connections in the skating community can last a lifetime. Gutierrez calls the bonds and friendships “very special.” 

While only time will tell how many new connections will come from this project, one thing is certain. It’s bringing together a community in a new and positive way.

“The more variety of recreational opportunities we can provide youth and adults, better that they're gonna be out there, they're gonna be active, they're gonna be doing positive things in the community and not doing negative things,” Jackson said. “It's just about really activating that space right now that's just kind of a dead zone under the interstate and using it positively.”

To stay updated about the Cushing Street Skate Park, follow their Instagram page.