With over a decade of planning and with its fair share of controversy, political bickering and set backs, the Perry Harvey Sr. Skate Park (or, Bro Bowl 2.0, as it's affectionately known) had its ribbon cutting Saturday, courtesy of Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn.
Members of the Team Pain (the new skate park's design team), local skate aficionados, community members and kids were present for the ribbon cutting and back slapping ceremonies at the brand new 12,000 square-foot concrete park in downtown Tampa.
“This is a great day,” said Buckhorn, “I mean, you see these kids that are out here, you see generations of people that have skated at the bowl, now have a magnificent, magnificent skate park, it's free, it's open to the public, we're going to grow another generation of skaters and the city is really proud to have done this and this is a gift to all the skateboarders in Tampa Bay.
A project over ten years in the making, the $6.5 million skate park was mired in controversy as many skaters at first protested calls to demolish the original Bro Bowl, an old graffiti emblazoned bowl, itself named in the 2013 National Register of Historic Places as the gentrification (er, "redevelopment") of this part of the city proliferated.
“It’s all about reaching at-risk youth,” said Team Pain designer Tito Porrata. “Skaters that you know are otherwise being harassed for doing something positive. We’re just hyped that in an area like this, set in a metropolitan setting with a beautiful skyline with access to locals, tourists and at-risk youth that’s free and unsupervised its setting a model for how skate parks should be in the state of Florida and nationwide for that matter."
As skaters young and old buzzed around doing ollies, grabbing the rail and flipping all over the pristine new concrete, a party atmosphere was in full swing as parents looked on from the sidelines with the smell of burgers from public grills wafted around the park. Amid all the newness of the park a small section stood out, a green collection of humps complete with graffiti laying in homage to the history of what came before.
“The entire mission was always to create almost like a museum-like skatepark that would honor the original and the past and the history of skateboarding in Tampa,” Porrata said.
With a cut of the ribbon, Buckhorn declared the park open. To complete the mayor's (albeit unofficial) role, he laid down flat on the new track and was ollied by 23-year-old local skater Derick Glancy.
“I actually went to the old one, once and then they tore it down,” said 14-year-old Tampa resident Jamie Brown. “Once I found out they were building a new one, I kept asking my dad, 'how long is it? How long until they finish?' Then I looked on the billboard and it said "Grand Opening" so we came out. Yeah, its cool."
As a rain shower rolled, in the newly opened park was already getting scuffed and broken in. Kids and dads of all ages and even a few mountain bike cops had wide grins as they checked the coolness of this new attraction to Tampa.