A crowd of skateboarders and supportive parents packed into Government Plaza to make their case for a half-pipe ramp at Langan Park, part of a long-running push to give Mobile’s skating community a proper place to ride.
The public hearing centered on a proposed skateboard ramp alongside a roller hockey court at Langan Park, but city officials signaled a bigger project could also be on the way. Colby Cooper, chief of staff for Mobile Mayor Sandy Stimpson, said the administration expects to receive bids soon on a larger skate park planned for Public Safety Memorial Park on Airport Boulevard, with possible City Council action as early as November. Cooper said the mayor remains committed to helping local skaters get a real facility of their own, and that between the Langan ramp and the Public Safety Park project, Mobile could soon have two dedicated places for skateboarders to practice legally.
For years, skateboarders in the Mobile area have had nowhere sanctioned to skate, a gap that speakers said unfairly brands their community. “A lot of us get stereotyped for being thugs,” said skater Thomas Lynch, who told the council it’s simply how his generation likes to spend its time, not an excuse to cause trouble. Chickasaw resident Allen Smith said he regularly drives up to an hour just to find a place to skate legally, since he gets turned away from public spaces back home.
The roller hockey court, a separate project from the skate ramp, would go on an existing concrete slab at Langan Park that once served as a pavilion. City public works director Bill Harkins said neither project would use local tax dollars: the skate ramp is being built by the local sheet metal workers union, while the Serda family is funding the roller hockey court.
Not every nearby resident welcomed the idea. Longtime neighbor Gretchen McDermott said she has lived by Langan Park for three decades and worried that skateboarding and roller hockey noise would disrupt the quiet many visitors currently enjoy. Council President Gina Gregory countered that the concrete slab has sat unused at the park for years and that she doesn’t expect either activity to draw large, disruptive crowds.
Jewel Cullen of Wooden Heart Skate Shop, a longtime advocate for a Mobile skate park, called the Langan ramp a “baby step” toward a larger facility. A previous, more ambitious skate park proposal was shelved in January after the council tabled a project costing more than $448,000, with Stimpson saying it should wait until the city’s finances improved. That larger park had first been proposed by former Mayor Sam Jones back in 2013.