Hilton Head Island approves new skate park after teen skaters push town council for change

HILTON HEAD ISLAND, S.C. (WTOC) - For years, the skate park at Bristol Arena sat deteriorating — wood rotting faster than crews could repair it, a symbol of decades of inaction. Then a 13-year-old named Gabriel Hicks decided he’d had enough.

Hicks, who coaches skating at the local recreation center, organized a group of friends from his church and showed up to Hilton Head Island Town Council meetings with a simple message: Where’s the skate park?

“Sometimes, you just gotta take action,” Hicks said. “It’s just a place to hang out for the youth. And, like, it’s just a community to get together.”

It worked.

The town is now moving forward with a brand-new concrete skate park and pump track at Crossings Park, near the intersection of Arrow Road and Helmsman Way at the entrance to Palmetto Dunes. The aging Bristol Arena skate park will be demolished to make way for the new facility, which will feature concrete ramps, half-pipes, and quarter-pipes. A pump track will be built just behind the skate park in the area of the Meadows Soccer Field footprint.

Mayor Alan Perry said the project had been discussed as far back as the 1970s, but it took Gabriel and his friends walking into a council chamber to finally make it happen.

“More recently, I gotta tell you, Gabriel and his buddies came into town council one day and said, ‘Where’s the skate park?’” Perry said.

The mayor says investing in what he calls “third spaces” — communal areas outside of home and school — is critical to keeping youth engaged. He also noted that Hilton Head has historically skewed older, and amenities like this are part of a deliberate strategy to attract and retain younger families.

The project is the result of more than four years of design work and public engagement, according to Neal Eike, the town’s Senior Project Manager for Capital Improvements.

Open houses and online polls consistently ranked a new skate park and pump track among the top requests from residents — alongside pickleball and tennis.

Eike says the design was built around three core principles: getting people outdoors and into public spaces, creating high-quality recreation with no financial barrier to entry, and building a space with multi-generational appeal — from toddlers to expert riders to the parents watching from the sidelines.

Eike said the park will be entirely free of charge, a deliberate contrast to the island’s reputation for private, gated amenities.

Hicks is mostly satisfied with the plans, but says the skate community is still hoping for one more addition.

“We still really want a deep bowl or a vertical ramp,” he said.

As for his message to other young people who want to see change in their communities?

“You can’t just sit down. You have to stand up for yourself.”