In 2007, when I was 9, my mom signed me up for skateboarding lessons. They were at a place called South Street Skatepark, located in a warehouse along the Clinton River in Rochester, my hometown. I was a shy kid who hated organized sports. But suddenly, I felt motivated by an after-school activity. The memories remain vivid for me, as they do for many of my childhood friends.
“We didn’t yell at you back then, did we?” owner Linda Gallaher asks me with
a chuckle. It’s early April; she and I, along with her husband, Von, are catching up at South Street Skateshop, which the couple opened in downtown Rochester as an offshoot of the park in 2009. Just four years later, when their lease on the warehouse was up for renewal, they decided to close the indoor skate park.
“It was devastating for so many of our skaters and families,” Linda says. “So we promised we would work with the city to see if we could do an outdoor, free public park.”
The plan is finally coming together after 12 years of effort. As soon as this
summer, a grassy parcel at the city’s Scott Street Park will be transformed into a skate plaza. The designer: Spohn Ranch, a Los Angeles company that has already built several public skate parks around Michigan, including in Northville, Armada, Milford, Garden City, Holland, Marquette, and Houghton.
Linda and Von’s long road of keeping their promise began when they started
speaking at Rochester City Council meetings in 2014. In 2018, the City Council voted unanimously to donate a plot of land to build the skate park, but with a condition: SPLAT (an advisory committee that was formed in 2017) needed to raise the construction funds — $800,000 — over the next three years. SPLAT applied for grants from several organizations — including the Tony Hawk Foundation (now The Skatepark Project) — but since Rochester isn’t an underserved community, Von says, they didn’t end up securing any.
“Which we understand,” Linda says. “This is a community that can support something like this on their own, if they really want it.” Without the needed funds, the project stalled. (To date, SPLAT has managed to raise just under $8,000 through grassroots donations, which is set aside in a Rochester Area Community Foundation bank account.)
But welcome news came last July: City Council allotted $500,000 in its fiscal
budget to finally build the skate park. When I spoke to Linda and Von in April, Spohn Ranch was finalizing its renderings, and SPLAT (which stands for Skate Park Leadership Advisory Team) was hoping to raise some additional resources.
“We’ll use everything that we’ve got in the 501(c)(3) fund, which will allow those park funds to be used just for the park, not for all the niceties around it,” Von says. “And whatever else we can get, whether it’s concrete from local concrete guys, or landscape architects that may want to donate materials or expertise. I want the park to be as big and nice as we can make it.”
Here’s hoping it will lead to many more memories for the next generation of skater kids.
The Market + The Graham
This spring, Rochester broke ground on another major development project. The Farmers Market Lot at Third and Water streets now has an additional indoor space called The Graham, named after Rochester’s first homeowners, who once lived in a log cabin in this very area. The Graham is being built on the foundation of the old Animal Emergency Center building at 265 E. Second St.
Made possible by $900,000 of funds left over from the American Rescue Plan, The Graham will be a place for live music and other events year-round, such as food festivals and farm-to-table dinners, says Kristi Trevarrow, executive director of the Rochester Downtown Development Authority, who adds, “But we really want to see what the community is looking for.”
This story originally appeared in the July 2025 issue of Hour Detroit magazine. To read more, pick up a copy of Hour Detroit at a local retail outlet. Click here to get our digital edition.
|
|
|
|
|
|
