A skateboarding site created by volunteers last summer in north-central Detroit gets a helping hand from the sport's best-known ambassador.
A $30,000 gift to expand Ride It Sculpture Park comes from the Tony Hawk Foundation of Oceanside, Calif., a charitable group set up by the former pro skater. The local recreation site receives the largest of 11 grants given to projects around the country.
"This kind of support . . . is huge—for the community and the city as a whole," says Detroit project co-founder Mitch Cope, quoted in a news release.
The California foundation describes its contribution as an effort "to continue expanding what has become a shining example of the Motor City’s renaissance."
The funds will help continue the construction of the sprawling skatescape along East Davison Street, which has already become an attraction for local youth. . . . With several adjacent homes housing artists and studio space, the expanding skatepark will weave between and even through several of the structures.
The skate park in an area called No Ham will be expanded. [Photos by Power House Productions]
Cope, a Detroit-born painter, and architect Gina Reichert, are partners in the Design 99 studio and founders of a four-year-old nonprofit called Power House Productions. The group raised money to start building Ride It in June 2012 after acquiring four vacant commercial lots in the neighborhood north of Hamtramck, an area dubbed No Ham by artists and other newcomers.
"Ride It Sculpture Park has always been a very personal project for us," Cope, who skateboarded as a youth, says in the foundation announcement. "It has the greatest potential for impact in our neighborhood of any of the projects we've done. It's a focal point for creative, social activity that is free and open to all."
At Power House's site, he and Reichert describe the vision this way:
"The park will extend into the neighborhood, revamping neglected alleys, garages and other vacant lots, creating a new and positive use for the forgotten and dismissed landscapes of this great city."
Ride It Sculpture Park Doc from 74Films on Vimeo.
