Morro Bay’s skate park closed in January but the city’s skate scene isn’t waiting for repairs. Skaters want a DIY park, built with their own hands, where they can learn, create, and own their space.
“Skateboarding’s really provided the bulk of my identity as a human being,” said Carey Lynch, a Los Osos native and local artist. “It’s connected me with most of my friend group. It’s taught me so many life lessons that apply to other things. It turned my eye toward art in a way. … It’s been like a guiding force in my life.”
The closure followed years of wear: Cracked ramps, rotting wood, and peeling paint marked the park’s decline. The Teen Center, which had overseen the facility, closed in March 2020 due to COVID-19 and never reopened, leaving the park largely unsupervised, Morro Bay Police Chief Amy Watkins explained. She added that Morro Bay High School had requested help with the skate park for many years.
“The skate park has become an attractive nuisance, presenting distractions and fostering an environment where both students and non-students sometimes engage in questionable behavior,” Morro Bay High School Principal Scott Schalde wrote in a statement to Watkins. “This proximity often delays students’ timely arrival to classes and their return from lunch breaks, detracting from our mission to foster a focused, safe, and productive educational environment.”
Watkins told New Times that officers responded to the park or surrounding property 67 times over two years for fights, vandalism, drug activity, trespassing, camping, and even commercial burglaries. Since December 2021, the city logged 131 calls for service—with nearly half of those calls in the past two years.
‘Morro Bay has such a strong surf and skate culture, but to be parkless in 2026 is, like, kind of shocking.’
–Carey Lynch, skateboarder
“The city intends to find a more suitable location with improved equipment for the future,” she said via email.
Lynch and local pro skateboarder Adam Ottenberg see the park’s closure as a chance to reclaim a skate park on their own terms. A DIY park, they say, is a living, evolving space shaped by the skaters themselves.
“That would be ideal for us,” Lynch said. “Everyone I’ve mentioned it to has been like, ‘Oh, that would be great.’ … The cool thing about a DIY is everyone kind of has the ability to build, it sort of governs itself. … It’s sort of like a living, breathing thing.”
Ottenberg has competed nationally and serves as a mentor at the DIY skate park in nearby Cayucos.
“I’ve been going to Cayucos Skate Park since the early 2000s, when it was first built,” he told council members during public comment on Jan. 27. “I was the little kid who was watching all of my friends who were older build the park and ask them how do you use this, and, you know, just life lessons.
“Now, I’m fortunate to be in a position where I’m kind of the older guy. One of many maintaining the Cayucos skate park. … [Kids] jump at the opportunity to learn how to use a drill, or blow some dust away, or use tools, and these kids get a sense of safety, a sense of community, they get to see things and skate things that they got to put their hands on and build.”
He added that Morro Bay doesn’t need a $2.2 million skate park like the one in San Luis Obispo.
“We’re pretty resilient, and a lot of us are blue collar as well and work in construction and know how to do these things ourselves, and it’s really just, if we have a space and approval,” he said.
Cambria’s skate park has faced delays, cost overruns, and ongoing management challenges. Local skaters say a DIY model in Morro Bay could avoid those issues, giving the community control over building, maintenance, and day-to-day use.
“There’s so much determination among skaters to build something that’s really fun,” Ottenberg said. “If it’s authorized and guaranteed to stay, people will go above and beyond to make it work.”
San Luis Obispo’s skate culture has a rich history. In the 1980s and ’90s, the Thrasher magazine Thrash-A-Thon at Cal Poly and local skate brands put the region on the map. Yet, smaller towns like Morro Bay and Los Osos remained underrepresented nationally. Grassroots efforts—from neighborhood DIY ramps to temporary COVID-era parks—have kept the culture alive.
“When I was really young, growing up in Los Osos, there would always be, you know, vans of some of the top skaters, in the skate world, just coming by and skating, and, you know, it would be like a full demonstration of what’s possible on a board,” Lynch recalled.
Morro Bay Mayor Carla Wixom said city officials are aware of the community’s interest in a new skate park and are open to ideas.
“We’re interested in what a DIY park might look like and welcome input from the skate community,” she told New Times via email. “We will be sure to notify them when our advisory boards take up this item.”
Public Works Director Greg Kwolek added that salvageable equipment from the old park is in storage and could be reused.
Wixom said city staff are considering several parks as potential locations, though none have been officially selected. The recreation advisory board and public works advisory board will weigh in on the matter in the coming months.
“We’re still exploring options,” she said. “Our goal is to find a safe, functional site that supports community use and allows creative input from skaters themselves.”
Lynch pointed to DIY skate parks elsewhere as examples of what Morro Bay could do. Portland’s Burnside Park and Bay Area projects like Waller Street—renamed in February 2025 to Zion Skate Plaza—and Sunset Dunes Park at Ocean Beach began small, expanding as skaters contributed labor, ideas, and culture, he said. He envisions the same path for Morro Bay: a functional space that evolves with the community.
“Morro Bay has such a strong surf and skate culture, but to be parkless in 2026 is, like, kind of shocking,” Lynch said. “There are towns in the middle of nowhere in other countries with great skate parks, and kids are just starting to skate. With it being an Olympic sport and like a genuine kind of career path, it makes sense to build this facility.” ∆
Reach Staff Writer Chloë Hodge at chodge@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Feb 19-26, 2026.
The Central Coast city leaders have no idea how to get a skatepark built. Keep waiting. And waiting. And waiting. Maybe you’ll end up with another poorly designed piece of shit park with more expensive landscaping features than the actual skatepark.