WATERBURY — The sound of wheels humming over concrete, metal trucks grinding against halfpipes and cheers echoed throughout the Hope Davey Park on a Saturday spring afternoon. After years of planning and construction, the revitalized skatepark in Waterbury is open for its first Vermont summer, cementing the town in the Vermont skate scene.
“The community’s reaction has been really fun. I think people have been really excited to have a new feature in town," said Jake Ferreira, a member of the Waterbury Skatepark Coalition. “I think a lot of parents have been really excited to have something not just for their kids, but also for them.”
The original skatepark was constructed in 2010. Over time, harsh blizzards and flooding caused the wood to rot and the ramps to break, leaving sharp and jagged edges.
“The park started to become not child friendly,” Ferreira said. “There were a lot of children around the park and it started to become a safety concern.”
The growing safety concerns increased calls to renovate the park.
Jake Blauvelt — a professional snowboarder from Waterbury — proposed building a new park out of concrete in 2019, backed by an initial $5,000 donation from the Waterbury Rotary Club.
In 2020, Blauvelt launched “Blauvelt’s Banks,” a slalom snowboarding fundraiser event to help fund the park, too. The event, held each March at Bolton Valley, donated proceeds to the project’s construction.
The next summer, the Waterbury Skatepark Coalition emerged from a local group of volunteers and skateboarders to help continue fundraising.
The coalition partnered with local skatepark builders, Catamount Skateparks, to help execute the design and build a skatepark within a $258,000 budget.
Catamount Skateparks was founded in 2021 by brothers Geoff and Pierre Hall. The organization’s members have worked on skateparks around the country, including in their hometown of Warren.
“I truly believe in the work that we do,” Pierre Hall said. “I know that it's going to save at least one kid from going down a bad road. We love skateboarding and we love doing the work that we do.”
Catamount Skateparks and the coalition went on a grassroots fundraising campaign throughout Vermont and held community events to collect feedback on the park’s design.
“I was reaching out, seeing what people wanted to skate and just working with them on a budget,” Geoff
Hall said. “We did it for a shoestring and I was happy to do it. We wanted to help the community and give back to skateboarding.”
After a few years of fundraising, the coalition decided to demolish the old Hope Davey Skatepark in October 2023 and shifted their focus to design layouts.
Once the design and location was finalized, Catamount Skateparks began construction on the new concrete park in July 2025.
“It was the most gratifying job I have ever been a part of,” Geoff Hall said. “We build skateparks all over, but Vermont is special.”
Four months later, in October 2025, the new 7,000-square-foot Waterbury Skatepark opened.
“I think the biggest thing in Waterbury that I've heard and seen, is that it really has shown people that it's possible to get things done,” Ferreira said. “I've heard from so many people in the community. They are stoked to see a project get built.”
Since then, skaters have been challenged by the park’s ramps and jumps — a freshness that makes Waterbury unique from other Vermont skateparks, some local skaters said.
“I think a magical component of Waterbury is it has the central element that no one has ever skated before, but everyone wants to figure out how to skate,” skater Brian Glenney said. “I think that central feature puts Waterbury on the national map.”
The Community News Service is a program in which University of Vermont students work with professional editors to provide content for local news outlets at no cost.
