Thursday, Apr. 13 Decatur Active Living (DAL) and American Ramp Company (ARC) held a joint event. The meeting allowed local Decatur skaters to choose between different skate obstacles and parks provided by ARC that they thought should be implemented during the park’s renovations. The meeting had a good turnout, with around 30 Decatur skaters, and other members of the community attending the meeting, along with the DHS skate club and their sponsor Mr. Sheldon.

“This is pretty groundbreaking in the progress of Mckoy skateparks’ whole history really,” founding member of the skate club Daniel Godoy said, “In the future, we’re gonna be reminiscing on the old days when McKoy was covered in graffiti and sucked, and it’s pretty cool to think we had such a big part in the renovations.”

During the meeting four stickers were handed out to each skater, three yellow stickers and one blue. The skaters were then able to put the yellow stickers on their three favorite obstacles, and one blue sticker on their favorite park. ARC provided three different skatepark designs, each with its own unique obstacles, this way skaters could choose their favorites between an array of stair sets, handrails, ledges and ramps. The parks all featured completely concrete designs with different styles and layouts. This style of skatepark is more popular in California than on the East Coast. Recently, more Georgia skateparks have featured full concrete designs, like Hapeville Skatepark and JB Williams skate park.

“I thought all the obstacles were cool and the layouts were really mellow,”  skate club member Julian Berman the DHS junior who secured a $ 175,000 grant from the City of Decatur in February 2023, said.

The event also allowed the skaters the opportunity to talk to Greg White, the head of DAL who skate club members have been working with since May of 2022. White began talking with the Decatur High School (DHS) skate club after an anonymous donation of $200,000 to DAL started the initial inception of the renovations. For more information on the renovation process, you can read the previous two stories on 3ten.org. 

“It’s really cool to be able to work with Mr. White, we have a lot of faith in him and we know he’ll make sure the renovation goes through, we’re really thankful for him,” member of the DHS skate club William Poelker said. 

“Honestly we’re all just really glad the city’s allowing us to have this much influence in the whole process, I don’t think this is super common,” Berman said.