The future location of a 42,00 square foot skate park at Boca Raton’s North Park complex, Sept. 2026. (Credit: Boca Daily News)
Boca Raton’s planning board voted 7-0 Thursday to approve construction of a new skate park within North Park, clearing the way for a facility that will include a pump track, skate bowls, a snake run and a street course on the site of the city’s former Ocean Breeze Golf Course.
The skate park will occupy a 1.43-acre portion of the 69.49-acre North Park property along NW Second Avenue, just south of the indoor pickleball and padel court facility that is currently under construction. It will sit on the eastern side of North Park, running alongside the Florida East Coast Railway and the park’s mountain bike trail.
According to construction plans filed with the city, the facility is arranged in two connected sections linked by a 10-foot-wide paved, shared-use path. In the northern section, a paved pump track — a looping circuit of rollers and banked turns that lets skateboarders, bikers and scooter riders build speed without pedaling — sits beside two in-ground skate bowls, joined by a snake run that lets riders flow between the bowls. A shade structure and a boulder-style seating area are planned next to the bowls. Farther south along the path, a separate street course will reproduce the ledges, rails, stairs and banks of urban skating, with its own shade structure, boulder seating and a dedicated bicycle parking area nearby.
The future location of a 42,00 square foot skate park at Boca Raton’s North Park complex, Sept. 2026. (Credit: Planning Document)
The future location of a 42,00 square foot skate park at Boca Raton’s North Park complex, Sept. 2026. (Credit: Planning Document)
The two shade structures are designed as the tallest built elements at the site; city staff have said the taller of the two will reach about 12.5 feet, set on a platform raised roughly 2 feet above the surrounding grade.
City Planner Eowin Devlin said there are no lights presently planned for the facility, and the skate park’s area represents about 2 percent of the entire park as a whole.
City building officials said the park received overwhelming support from residents, with 43 letters received from those in favor of constructing the facility compared to just three against it. Staff said the skate park will sit about 311 feet from the nearest residential property line – the Boca Teeca condominium to the west. Boca Teeca residents formed the largest group of objectors to the plan, though some residents of the complex said that the community’s board members did not speak for them after one stated during a public comment portion that he represented “1,700 residents.”
“I’m 50-years-old and I can’t wait to skate the pump track,” said resident Rinaldo Caponera, who emphasized his desire to pass on a love for skating to his 9-year-old son, Asher, who also spoke at the meeting.
“I’ve attended and have spoken at every meeting for two years now,” Asher said. “I’ve been waiting for this my entire life, and life isn’t forever. I learn as much from skating as I do from going to school. You learn commitment, make connections and have a great time.”
On the opposing side, some residents said they were not opposed to a skate park in town, but felt it would be better suited for Spanish River Park, which is farther removed from residential properties. North Park, some others at the meeting said, would be better suited since it was already developed as a golf course and, therefore, would not disturb gopher tortoises who make portions of Spanish River Park their home.
“There are 16 buildings worth of people [in Boca Teeca], and I’ll tell you – they outvote all the people who want the skate park,” said resident Michael Schneider. “Basically, what we want is a golf course, a community center and green space – trails, walking trails, bike trails, etcetera.”
“What do we do?” he asked rhetorically. “We compromise. Most people think the skate park is a $4 million waste, but I’m a liberal guy, so put it in Spanish River Park. Spanish River Park would be the best because it’s near a public school, a parochial school, and we’re going to put the new police department building near there.”
Resident Rachel Bennett, however, said she believes North Park is the perfect location for a skate park.
“The current skate park is obsolete, and the North Park location is great because it’s centrally located,” she said. “They’ve done a great job designing the park, and it fits in with the flow of the whole park. It’s integrated beautifully.”
The future location of a 42,00 square foot skate park at Boca Raton’s North Park complex, Sept. 2026. (Credit: Boca Daily News)
The future location of a 42,00 square foot skate park at Boca Raton’s North Park complex, Sept. 2026. (Credit: Planning Document)
The skate park will be enclosed by its own 8-foot chain-link fence, separate from North Park’s perimeter fencing, with sections of 6-foot fencing along parts of the shared path and gated maintenance access points kept apart from the public entrances. Along the site’s eastern edge, between the skate features and the railway, landscape plans call for a dense buffer of native trees and palms, including live oaks, gumbo limbo, slash pine and cabbage palmetto, underplanted with saw palmetto, wild coffee, coontie and other native species. Most existing mature trees on the site are slated to be preserved and barricaded during construction, according to a tree disposition plan, with some relocated elsewhere in the park and others removed and replaced through mitigation plantings.
American Ramp Company of Joplin, Missouri, has been contracted to design and build the skate features, according to city records.
The city code does not set a parking standard for skate parks, leading the district to base its parking estimate on the 17 spaces at the existing Tim Huxhold Skate Park on Crawford Boulevard. Adding the skate park’s demand brings North Park’s total parking requirement to 152 spaces, though the park’s approved site plan already provides 327, leaving a surplus of 175 spaces, according to the staff report. City officials said they had no concerns about parking capacity.
The future location of a 42,00 square foot skate park at Boca Raton’s North Park complex, Sept. 2026. (Credit: Boca Daily News)
The skate park represents an amendment to North Park’s broader site plan, first approved by the board in Sept. 2024 and amended in 2025. The full park, still under construction, is planned to include multipurpose trails, a community garden, a dog park, playground areas, pavilions, a restroom building and a maintenance building. An adjacent 5.24-acre parcel within the same property is being developed separately as a pickleball and paddle facility.
The property was once part of the roughly 210-acre Ocean Breeze Golf Course, approved for development in 1973 under the Boca Teeca Master Plan. The course closed years ago, and the beach and park district purchased the North Park portion of the site in 2018. District officials held two public design meetings on the skate park, in August and December of 2025, and provided its latest update in May before bringing the proposal to the board on Thursday.
Board members, as they voted, largely praised the project, emphasizing that the existing skate park needs to be replaced with a facility that can support not only traditional skateboarding, but other wheeled sports such as rollerblading and bicycling.
“It’s old, it’s on the opposite end of town, and probably anyone who is a skater on this side of town is not going to downtown Boca to use it,” said board member Timothy Dornblaser. “I don’t think this was ever meant to be a passive park – it was supposed to be a park for everyone in Boca Raton to use.”
Other board members said they did not see how the skate park would become a bother to residents of the Boca Teeca complex.
“The distance away from the condominiums is significant, and there are measures that can be taken through landscaping and berming,” said member Jorge Camejo. “This is another example of well-thought-out investment that will benefit not just one segment of our population, but across the board.”
The plan must receive final approval from the city council before construction can begin.
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