A $850,000 skate park on Padre Island is nearly ready to move into construction, bringing Corpus Christi one step closer to having a skate park in every city district.
The project at Don and Sandy Billish Memorial Park is about 90% through its design phase, according to Sergio Gonzalez, assistant director of Parks and Recreation.
"Right now the skate park at Billish is around 90% design. We should be at 100% within the next couple of weeks. After that, we'll go out for bid for construction," Gonzalez said.
Construction is funded by the Downtown Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone and could begin within months, with the park potentially opening by next summer.
The effort was years in the making. Adam Rios, a member of the Parks and Recreation Advisory Committee, spent five years pushing for skate parks across the city, working with local skaters and businesses to ensure each park would serve its community.
It was a group of young skaters who helped spark the Padre Island project.
"The Stoke Brokers Association. A group of kids that went to City Hall reached out to me and said, what do we gotta do? And I said, well, it starts with getting involved and they're so involved that they're gonna get a skate park now," Rios said.
Rios said the design process was intentionally community-driven, with input gathered from skaters and local shops.
"These are skaters behind these concepts and designs so you know skateboarding sort of went in a direction real street style, but some guys like the bulls so you've got to talk with all the shops you know you you come to Benjamin's and you talk with the skaters here, uh, you talk with Bond Dulce Skate Company and you just collectively have to come together and say, OK, what's, what's best, what's gonna work best," Rios said.
Local businesses also advocated for the park, citing safety concerns.
"You have local businesses out there that were even they were helping advocate for this because they saw how unsafe it could be," Rios said.
Gonzalez said the city kept skaters involved throughout every stage of the design process.
"We've been in constant communication with them, with the designer, with the engineer, being sure that it is a, uh, that it works for everybody and that there's no, you know, uh, second-guessing about the skate park. So it's a very community-involved design," Gonzalez said.
At Benjamin's Skate Shop, the anticipation is growing. General Manager Megan Martin said the island's skate community has long needed more space.
"I think everybody's just excited for the kids in the community because, you know, we do have the Flower Bluff Skate Park, but it's very tiny and it gets overcrowded very fast, um, and there's a huge, um, skate community on the island," Martin said.
For Rios, the Padre Island park represents the finish line of a vision he has pursued for years.
"Once we break ground on that, there will be a skate park in every district of Corpus Christi and that's a dream come true for me," Rios said.
This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.
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