With its four tiers of ledges, ramps and rails, the Rodgers Family Skate Plaza at Trackside is a skateboarder’s paradise. The elaborate park at the corner of Hunter and North Salem streets in Apex marks its fifth anniversary in August and will soon welcome back hundreds of skateboarders, in-line skaters and scooter aficionados after a period of closure for repairs and improvements.
The Rodgers Family Skate Plaza is one of Apex’s crown jewels. For the street skating community, it’s hallowed ground. Open 24 hours a day and offering multiple competition elements that include an 8-foot-deep bowl, the Rodgers Family Skate Plaza is one of only five skate parks in the Triangle that attracts beginner and advanced skateboarding enthusiasts who ollie, kickflip and grind on its sleek surfaces. Newbies learn to push, glide and turn on their boards while seasoned skaters practice dazzling, gravity-defying feats. The park’s concrete and brick surfaces and gentle dips also provide an ideal environment for in-line skaters and scooter fans to hone their skills.
Before the plaza was built, teenagers had nowhere to ride their boards other than on the town’s busy sidewalks and parking lots. Concerned – and often annoyed – residents frequently complained to the Apex police who broke up the activity and sometimes even issued tickets for trespassing. Apex Mayor Jacques Gilbert, who was the town’s police captain at the time, remembers those days when everyone was frustrated. “It went on for a while and led to an adversarial relationship between the police and the skateboarders,” he says.
It wasn’t until an encounter with a strong-willed skateboarder named Tracy Stallworth in 2012 that Gilbert understood his and other teens’ feelings about the lack of places to skate. Gilbert listened as they vented their frustrations, and consequently gained valuable insight into the skateboarding culture. As a possible solution, Gilbert presented the idea of a local skateboarding competition that would not only give the kids a reason to skate, but would also raise awareness for a much-needed place in Apex solely designated for their sport.
Although the teens appreciated Gilbert’s lofty idea for a skate park, they never believed it would happen. Yet on that September day, hundreds of kids showed up to ride the ramps – and lend support for the police captain’s mission. Gilbert then encouraged three avid skateboarders to discuss the need for a skate park at an Apex Town Council meeting and worked with several local businesses that shared the same vision, including Apex Outfitter & Board Co., which caters to the skateboarding community. In 2013, the town council allocated over a half million dollars for the skate plaza’s construction on a section of land at Hunter Street Park, with the Apex Chamber of Commerce and local individuals and businesses providing additional funding. A skateboarding team, comprised of 25 residents ages 5 to 50, submitted drawings for what they knew would make an ideal skate park. CLH Design, a landscape architecture and civil engineering design firm in Cary, along with renowned skate park builder Team Pain, incorporated those ideas into the final design and created a gleaming 13,000-square-foot plaza that officially opened to the public on August 1, 2015.
John Rodgers, president of GoPrime Mortgage in Apex, wholeheartedly believed in the project and donated $100,000 for naming rights to the park. “I was approached by Town Manager Bruce Radford (at the time) and had known our current mayor for a while when he was an officer with the Apex Police Department because I fully support the work that Jacques is doing with Blue Lights College (a police prep academy),” Rodgers says. “I believe my relationship with these two men and their passion for the project inspired me to write the check. Beyond that, they should take all of the credit for their work in supporting Apex citizens young and old. I am so proud of the project, and I’ll occasionally stop by and take pictures with the kids. I love it for the kids!”
John Brown, director of Apex Parks, Recreation and Cultural Resources, is equally proud of the park. “It’s probably one of our most used facilities and it has certainly filled its niche by providing something for those who may not be interested in things like athletics and team sports,” he says. “It was originally intended to provide an opportunity for the skateboarding community here in Apex, most of which were teenagers, and give them a place to gather and skate. It’s accomplished not only that but also introduced skateboarding and in-line skating to a lot of other age groups which we’re very happy about.”
Brown says the Town of Apex is eager to get the Rodgers Family Skate Plaza back up and running once renovations, which include increasing the skateable surface area and installing additional safety railings and lighting, are complete. He also says the park will operate in full compliance with Gov. Roy Cooper’s orders regarding COVID-19 and will follow all safety protocols to prevent its spread.
While Apex citizens have certainly appreciated Mayor Gilbert’s efforts to help their youth, two other significant individuals also showed their admiration. On September 21, 2015, former President Barack Obama and former Vice President Joe Biden honored Gilbert and the young man who inspired him, Tracy Stallworth, with the Champions of Change award at the White House. The award is given to extraordinary pairs of police officers and young people who assume the best of each other and work together to improve public safety in their communities.
Mayor Gilbert says seeing people enjoy the skate park makes him tear up on occasion. “Every problem is an opportunity for a solution,” he says. “I wanted to help out skateboarders so they could have a good relationship with police. I had the community relationships but they had the knowledge and the passion, and we just put them together.”
The Rodgers Family Skate Plaza is located at 1290 Ambergate Station in Apex. To learn more, visit apexnc.org/485/Trackside-Skate-Plaza or call 919-249-3402.
