The crowd of children and adults early on Friday afternoon, hours before its official reopening, were a clear indication that the renovated Lars Simenson Skatepark on South Essex Street in Montauk is a hit.
Originally opened in 1999, the park, an inground swimming pool-style structure with multiple concrete bowls and ramps, received a substantial update from Pivot Custom Skateparks of Joplin, Mo. It was renamed in 2010 for the Montauk and Springs resident, a skateboarding and surfing enthusiast who died in an accident in 2007, at the age of 18. The project, which began in March, followed a successful fund-raising effort.
The park’s original design was by the late skateboarder Andy Kessler, a pioneer among the sport’s New York City aficionados who died near Montauk in 2009. Though a re-envisioning and expansion was first discussed shortly after his death, it wasn’t until 2020 that the town established a dedicated reserve account for its renovation.
Friday’s celebration, which included music by Student Body and the Montauk Project, was the culmination of 20 months’ worth of planning, fund-raising, and construction. In December 2020, with the Covid-19 pandemic raging, John Britton and JJ Veronis, members of the Montauk Skatepark Coalition, held an informal, socially-distant meeting with East Hampton Town Councilman David Lys, the town board’s liaison to the project, and Tim Garneau, a town trustee, at Townline BBQ, on the Wainscott-Sagaponack border. In initial discussions, the group envisioned a modest renovation and a budget of around $175,000. But “as we started to fund-raise and get the word out,” Mr. Britton said on Friday, “the energy just started to build. All of a sudden, the thing took on a life of its own.”
Tito Porrata of Pivot Custom Skateparks went beyond the scope of his directive, Mr. Britton said, presenting a plan for a complete renovation. Once the principals saw it, the reaction, he said, “was ‘Oh my God, now that we see it, how can we not have that?’ Then we had to go back and get more money to start really building it out. What happened was a very organic process of people just building enthusiasm, community coming together, and the stoke continuing to build until we ended up with something that is world class.”
Momentum began to build when the town accepted an engineering proposal for the park’s expansion in February 2021. The town bonded for $250,000 in March of that year. The Coalition registered as a nonprofit in September. A Skate Day at the park and an art auction collectively raised $95,000 toward the renovation, while three other skateboarding events at the park, including competitions and a skate day for girls, raised still more, and then a Labor Day weekend fund-raising event at the Surf Lodge in Montauk brought in more than $30,000.
But more than 300 individual donations put the effort over the top. Two hundred and twenty people donated through a GoFundMe campaign and around 70 people bought more than 110 pieces of donated artwork. A vintage truck was raffled, and by last September $1.3 million, including $280,000 allocated by the town, had been raised, enough to solicit bids for construction.
“I remember when Andy came up here in 1997 or '98,” Mr. Veronis, who was a friend of Kessler’s, said on Friday. “The town showed him this area, and it was scruffy. It was overgrown and thick with bushes and cracked tennis courts, and it was like, ‘You can have this.’ ” But the site revealed itself as a diamond in the rough, he said, surveying the finished product. “It’s spectacular.”
Mr. Porrata, who was also a friend of Andy Kessler’s, described his job as “bringing all these people together. Every park that we are behind ends up becoming very tailored to the community. This is like a very pro-level golf course — they’re unique — and it’s going to be a draw. We’re very proud about the outcome. I think these guys took the design and went with it, understood the assignment, and just knocked it out of the park.”
The task, he said, is to balance the complexities of a skatepark with “a unique, custom-to-the-community solution. This is what you see here, this surf-based style.”
Ben Horan, Pivot Custom’s crew chief on the project, agreed. “With the surf culture here, this is perfect,” he said.
The renovated park “was intended to be inclusive and inviting for more beginners and families,” said Mr. Veronis. “That was really important.”
The hill between the skatepark and the playing fields at the Henry “Hank” Zebrowski Memorial Park has been cleared of brush, some of it invasive species, which Mr. Veronis said was Mr. Lys’s idea. “It makes a much larger, unified area,” he observed. “Also, the view . . . it just changes the whole dynamic.”
The park will be open from dawn to dusk and there is no fencing around it, John Rooney, the town’s superintendent of recreation, noted. “It just allows the community to use it when they want to use it,” he said. “I’m not a skater myself, but I understand that this needs to be as open as the ball field. Why is this any different?”
Users of the renovated park are looking forward to the town’s providing a drinking station, Mr. Veronis said hopefully.
Mr. Lys predicted a diverse group of users including “young girls, old girls, young boys — everyone, all ages. That was one of the designs that Tito and everyone started talking about: How can we bring my 5-year-old in here and get into this? . . . Those are the elements of the design that I think are very important to incorporate to make a really true community effort.”
“Skateparks are the new community centers,” said Walt Zamora of the Coalition. “This is where our kids can come and hang out and mingle. It doesn’t matter your age or gender, or whether you skate or rollerblade.”
Mr. Porrata agreed. “It’s really more like an ‘action sports facility.’ “
“All of us agree on it being really a harmonious project, how we all came together and worked so well, and everything flowed — no pun intended — which is symbolic of the feel of this park,” Mr. Veronis summarized. “But it comes from Andy Kessler, his spirit. I say that a little selfishly because I was good buddies with him, but this is for Andy. For everybody, for sure, but let’s remember him.”
Post-renovation, “it’s like skating on velvet now,” he said. “Amazing.”