New skate plaza in Center City uses repurposed granite from original Love Park

Pat Heid knew it was all over in May 2023 when he saw the fencing go up around Thomas Paine Plaza in front of the Municipal Services Building across the street from City Hall.

The final bastion of skateboarding culture in downtown Philadelphia would become another mostly flat, lifeless, pedestrian plaza, stripped of the kickflip jumps and 180 spins that defined the space in 1990s and 2000s. It would face the same fate that befell Dilworth Plaza in 2014 and Love Park in 2018, when they got renovated. Skateboarding in Center City would become nearly extinct.

“It was the end of this incredible run of these spaces that you could never replace,” said Heid, a board member of SkatePhilly, a local skateboarding advocacy group. “It was extremely heartbreaking for our community.”

Heid knew they plazas couldn’t be replaced, but maybe their remnants could be repackaged into something new. As demolition began on Paine Plaza that spring, he pitched an idea to the city: What if the new Paine Plaza featured a skating area built from the pieces of the old sites, Love Park and Dilworth Plaza?

On Friday, the city will unveil a plaza featuring a skating area with that exact design. The $18 million plaza’s skating section will consist of a giant domino game piece made of granite from Love Park, a bench from Dilworth, and skating surface granite from the same manufacturer that made the original Thomas Paine Plaza — tying together the legacy of all three beloved former downtown skating sites into something new. Next year, the city will add a statue of pioneering Black economist and civil rights lawyer Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander.

It’s a major triumph for a city once so well known for its skating that Love Park was featured in a version of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater video game.

When Heid raised the idea in 2023, the city government was quickly on board. It never meant to eliminate skating with the renovations to Love Park and Dilworth Plaza in the first place, said Aparna Palantino, deputy managing director at Philadelphia’s Capital Program Office. The renovations simply prioritized accessibility for those in wheelchairs, which meant eliminating some of the elevated elements skaters would leap on and off of.

But the city knew the reputation of Love Park in particular. “For skateboarders, it was sacred ground,” Palantino said. That’s why it held onto the granite from the park after it was renovated.

After months of government meetings, designs, and budget tweaks, the concept of a new plaza made from the old ones was poised to become a reality when a roadblock arose. The team developing the park needed to reduce its budget for the project by half, Heid said.

The city proposed cutting costs by making the skating area ground concrete instead of granite, he said. That wasn’t acceptable to Heid. It wouldn’t be cohesive or properly pay homage to the old skate plazas without granite grounds, Heid said. And that was the whole point. So he looped in iconic skate shoe brand Vans, which he works for as a sales rep. The sneaker company kicked in $300,000 to make it happen.

Heid said he hopes the new plaza breathes life back into the area around the Municipal Services Building and brings back the spirit of the old plazas that so many in the community still yearn for.

“This is a lot bigger than some kids at a skatepark,” Heid said. “These three amazing plazas and spots defined many lives.”

And at 2:30 p.m. Friday, as skaters take to the repurposed granite, it may start to again.