Tour the new Lafayette Community Skatepark, opening Friday
The $800K park opens Friday afternoon at Faith East as a city-county-church combo effort.
Support for this edition comes from Food Finders Food Bank. Food Finders’ Drive Away Hunger Fall Food Drive begins Nov. 1 and runs through Dec. 5. Food Finders invites the community to unite in stocking its shelves and ensure those facing hunger can provide for their families this winter. After surpassing our 750,000-meal goal last year, Food Finders is looking to raise enough to cover 800,000 meals. Find out how you can help by going to www.food-finders.org/dah/
A TOUR OF THE NEW LAFAYETTE COMMUNITY SKATEPARK
Rolling out some touch-up painting along the concrete edges of the Lafayette Community Skatepark ahead of Friday afternoon’s opening at the Faith East campus, Christy Wiesenhahn, co-owner, director and designer for Hunger Skateparks, this week said it’s been obvious that skaters who have stopped by to mark the progress over the past year are burning to get on the 300-by-61 feet of runs and features.
“They’ve all been so sweet,” Wiesenhahn said, taking a break on the final details for a quick tour of the $800,000 skatepark along Indiana 26, on a portion of what had been Faith East’s parking lot.
“You can tell,” she said, “they’ve been waiting. They just want to get out here. And we get it. We can’t wait to get them out here.”
Talk of the new skatepark started in 2023, when Faith Church looked to remove wooden ramps it had installed in 2007 and maintained for all-comers next to its community center on the congregation’s campus just east of Lafayette. That space was tabbed for a new athletic training facility for Faith Christian High School.
The timing coincided with renewed pressure from the Greater Lafayette skating community for a public facility. Lafayette and Tippecanoe County wound up committing $200,000 each to the project at Faith East, with the church raising the rest through the congregation, community donations and assorted in-kind donations.
Hunger Skateparks, a Bloomington-based company, designed and built the park, based in part on wish lists laid out by skaters and bikers.
“This truly is their park,” Arvid Olson, director of the Faith Legacy Foundation, said while standing on the edge of a bowl incorporated into the design. “We’re just playing host.”
After Friday’s dedication ceremony – set for 4 p.m., with no promises of mayors or county commissioners dropping in or grinding rails – the park will be open daily, dawn to dusk, Olson said. Entry will be free, once skaters sign a release and wear safety gear.
“Pretty much the same as it was at the ramps when they were on the other side of this parking lot,” Olson said. “That was self-regulated, for the most part. We’ll be around to make sure things are OK. But the people who came didn’t come to cause problems. They came to skate. We fully expect that’s what’s going to happen here, too. … We’re all excited for this to open.”
The features: Wiesenhahn, who owns the company with her husband, Bart Smith, said Hunger Skateparks has built 22 public parks in Indiana alone. That includes two parks in Kokomo, which is about 45 minutes away, and another recently opened in Crown Point, about an hour north of Lafayette. She said designers understood that many skaters will take trips to use parks in other cities, as it is.
“We thought about what was there and tried to bring what was not there into here,” Wiesenhahn said. “We tried to not duplicate. … Everybody travels. So, this is going to be a regional moment.”
She said the designers rarely gets such a long space to work with.
“Because it was in the parking lot, we had a really long width and we were able to keep asphalt on both sides, so it kind of creates more community space,” she said. “Then we added a few features in the asphalt to connect it to the skatepark that are pretty interpretive.”
Among those:
The east end of the park features a basketball hoop, set on a backboard made from rough-hewn boards and a taco feature at the base that can be used as a ramp for layups and slam dunks, as well as a ball return. “We’ve been wanting to do a basketball hoop forever,” she said. “We finally got that one in.”
(Photo: Frank Oliver) The length gave Hunger Skateparks designers room for a double stage area with street features including a down rail; a Pier 7, which are concrete ledges and steps mimicking the look of a San Francisco skateboard landmark; a hubba, which is a concrete ledge that runs down a bank that skaters can grind or slide down; a China bank feature; and a manual pad combination – which is similar to a curb – between return walls. “All those things were highly requested by the skaters,” she said. “We also have a replica feature from Faith’s old park, which the kids really wanted. But we kind of upped the ante a bit and make it longer and more useful. It actually was like an ode to their old park. … The length here is unlike anything you can find in Indiana.”
The other side of the park includes what she called interpretive features, including a bowl, classic jump lines and returns for bikers, pump bump camelback features, the basketball goal and a moon sculpture feature meant to be a nod to Purdue’s Cradle of Astronauts.
“Even though I’m pointing out these lines,” Wiesenhahn said, “the whole park is meant to be wherever you want to go. That’s what makes it advanced or fun for everyone, even people that just like to carve around. … Some skaters really just like to be very linear. But I would say in Indiana, we’re more like ATV skateboarders – we kind of like everything. So, they’ll be everywhere.”
If you go: A dedication ceremony for the Lafayette Community Skatepark will be 4 p.m. Friday, Oct. 24, at the Faith East campus, 5526 Indiana 26 East. The skatepark will officially open after that. Hours: Dawn to dusk, daily.
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DANIELS ON REDISTRICTING? NOT A FAN: Count Mitch Daniels, former Indiana governor and Purdue president, among those calling on Indiana Republicans in the General Assembly to stand against President Trump-led pressure campaign for a mid-decade redistricting process ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
Daniels’ op-ed Wednesday in The Washington Post included these passages:
I have kept almost entirely quiet about matters of partisan politics ever since leaving elective office more than a dozen years ago. But watching the national drive to redraw congressional district lines mid-decade prompts a temporary departure from my bleacher seat. My home state of Indiana is on the national Republican target list for new lines, as part of the quest to ensure continued control of the House. While the outcome sought is one I support, the tactic being employed to get there is not, and I hope earnestly that my state’s leaders will politely decline to participate. …
A plausible rationale for a do-over would be to redress an obvious injustice in the current lines, but that situation does not obtain here. Indiana’s map is visually reasonable, salamander-free; the districts are compact and for the most part respect county lines. Republicans drew this map and have no unfairness to complain about; with about 60 percent of the state’s total congressional votes cast, they won seven out of nine House seats. …
I don’t underestimate the pressure Indiana’s leaders are under, and I empathize with them in the predicament they face, but I hope they’ll quietly and respectfully pass on this idea.”
Read Daniels’ full column here: “I want the GOP to keep control of the House. But not this way. My fellow Indiana Republicans shouldn’t cave to White House pressure to redistrict.”
Meanwhile, here’s a look at where things stood this week on the redistricting front, via reporting by Indiana Capital Chronicle’s Casey Smith: “Indiana Senate GOP says redistricting votes ‘aren’t there,’ stalling mid-decade push. Trump and Braun have urged Indiana lawmakers to act — but Senate Republicans say they still lack consensus.”
INDIANA-ILLINOIS COMMISSION: Indiana Capital Chronicle reporter Leslie Bonilla Muñiz had an account of the first meeting of the Indiana-Illinois Boundary Adjustment Commission, a body assigned by the Indiana General Assembly to look into taking in more than 30 Illinois counties that have discussed seceding from the state. How serious the mission is – Illinois has no representation assigned to the commission and Gov. J.B. Pritzker has dubbed it “a stunt” – wasn’t immediately clear. (Not mentioned was a possible and very real first step: Figure out why Marquee, the network that carries Chicago Cubs games, has been bumped up to a premium tier on Xfinity’s channel lineup this month in the Lafayette market.) Here’s a report on what did and didn’t come from Wednesday’s meeting: “Illinois absorption commission holds first meeting. The panel discussed a longshot effort to have Indiana absorb several — maybe dozens — of Illinois counties.”
Support for this edition comes from Food Finders Food Bank. Food Finders’ Drive Away Hunger Fall Food Drive begins Nov. 1 and runs through Dec. 5. Find out how you can help by going to www.food-finders.org/dah/
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Huh. At least one Republican, Mitch Daniels, stating the obvious:
"A plausible rationale for a do-over would be to redress an obvious injustice in the current lines, but that situation does not obtain here. Indiana’s map is visually reasonable, salamander-free; the districts are compact and for the most part respect county lines. Republicans drew this map and have no unfairness to complain about; with about 60 percent of the state’s total congressional votes cast, they won seven out of nine House seats."