Union City opens 4,000-square-foot skatepark on Southside
Get your helmets ready: Union City has opened a skatepark.
City officials gathered Friday to cut the ribbon on the 4,000-square-foot skatepark, which joins the 16-acre Highway 29 Ballfields Recreational Complex at Roosevelt Highway and Dixie Lake Road.
According to a city news release, the skatepark has the following elements: Bowl feature of varying depths, quarter-pipe wall, tiered cantilevered grind ledge, various grind rails and boxes and a unique wedge ramp.
The project cost $250,000 and was funded with money from the city and the Georgia Department of Natural Resources Land and Water Conservation Program, according to the city.
Patrick Gillespie, a Union City resident, said his involvement started when he asked his aunt for a ride to another skatepark and she wouldn’t take him. So he got to thinking about why there wasn’t a skatepark in Union City.
He emailed Mayor Vince Williams, and a few months later was in a meeting with Williams. The mayor told him they already had one in the works but he helped push it over the edge.
Gillespie said he was involved in a focus group to plan the park.
“It’s the perfect size for the area we’re in,” he said in a city-produced video.
Tyreek Morrison, who has been skating for 13 years, said in the video he was thrilled to have a skatepark near him.
“I used to pray like ‘please let us get a park on the southside’,” he said.
About the Author
Ben Brasch is the reporter tasked with keeping Fulton County government accountable. The Florida native moved to Atlanta for a job with The AJC. If there's something important to you going on in Fulton, he wants to know about it. Help him better metro Atlanta by dropping a line, anonymously or otherwise.
