The kid who started the petition was 13. She is 16 now, and on Wednesday evening she sat in the front row of the McKinleyville Community Services District board meeting wearing a hoodie that read “Build the Bowl” in hand-painted letters. When the board voted 5-0 to approve the final site plan for the McKinleyville skatepark, Sage Alvarado did not cheer. She just exhaled. Then she hugged the person next to her, who happened to be her mom.

Three years. That is how long the skatepark has taken to get from a Change.org petition with 400 signatures to a permitted, funded, ready-to-build project. The board’s vote Wednesday approved the final site plan, the last bureaucratic gate before construction.

The park will be built on a 14,000-square-foot pad on the east side of Hiller Park, near the existing softball fields. The design, created by Grindline Skateparks out of Seattle (the same firm that built the popular Arcata skatepark in 2018), includes a 6-foot-deep flow bowl, a street course section with ledges and manual pads, a pump track loop, and a flat area for beginners. Total project cost: $803,000.

Funding came together from five sources. A California State Parks grant covered $400,000. The McKinleyville CSD contributed $150,000 from park improvement funds. The Humboldt Area Foundation matched $100,000 through its community development program. A GoFundMe organized by the McKinleyville Skatepark Committee raised $91,000 over two years. The remaining $62,000 came from local business sponsorships, including donations from five cannabis companies in the McKinleyville area.

“That last piece was the hardest,” said Rob Thurman, who chairs the skatepark committee and teaches sixth grade at McKinleyville Middle School. “The big grants cover the big numbers, but there’s always a gap. We filled it with bake sales, a skate jam, and a lot of knocking on doors.”

The community design sessions were where the project found its shape. Grindline held three open workshops at the McKinleyville Community Center in the spring of 2025, laying butcher paper on the floor and letting kids, parents, and local skaters draw what they wanted. Thurman said about 120 people participated across the three sessions.

“The kids wanted a bowl. The parents wanted a beginner area. The older skaters wanted street features,” Thurman said. “Grindline looked at all of it and came back with a design that fit the footprint and hit every request. That’s what good park designers do.”

The project was not without opposition. Two residents on Hiller Road, which borders the park to the north, submitted written objections citing noise and potential increases in loitering. The board addressed those concerns by requiring the park to close at dusk (no lights will be installed) and by adding a planted buffer between the park and the nearest residential lot line. A third objector raised liability questions, which the CSD’s insurance provider addressed in a letter confirming coverage under the district’s existing park liability policy.

Sage Alvarado spoke during public comment. She was brief.

“I started skating when I was 11, and the closest park was Arcata. My mom drove me there twice a week. Now my little brother skates too, and he’s 9, and he should be able to ride his bike to a park in his own town. That’s it. That’s the whole thing.”

The board did not need convincing, but it was the kind of testimony that makes people in a meeting room sit up a little straighter.

Construction is expected to begin in late April, after the ground dries enough for excavation. Grindline estimates a 10-to-12-week build, putting the opening sometime in July. Thurman said the committee is planning a grand opening event with a skate contest, music, and food.

The McKinleyville skatepark will be the third public skatepark in the greater Humboldt Bay area, joining Arcata’s park on Sunset Avenue and the smaller facility in Eureka at Cooper Gulch. For a community that has spent three years talking about concrete, the next conversation will finally be about skating on it.