Colfax's New Skatepark Was Built From Donated Concrete, One Truckload at a Time

The Colfax Skatepark opened on Saturday, October 3, to a crowd of riders from Auburn to Nevada City. It sits on Parkhill Drive, on the old pool site next to the baseball field and the Lions Splash Park, about a five-minute walk from Historic Downtown Colfax. The usual version of the story is a long, patient community campaign that finally paid off. That's true, but it leaves out how the park actually got built. By 2024 the plan had become too expensive for the people who were supposed to build it. Placer County's paperwork shows the volunteer labor being replaced by paid contract work. After that, the region's gravel pits, concrete suppliers and haulers did much of what the volunteers would have done, and they did it for free.

That explains why the park looks the way it does, why it took 11 years, and why one piece is still unfinished.

The volunteer plan that stopped working

The early budget assumed a lot of volunteer labor. An April 23, 2024 memo to the Placer County Board of Supervisors explains what happened to that assumption. After 2022, the project's backers learned that "work planned for volunteer labor would need to be performed at prevailing wage rates under contract." Add two years of inflation and the estimate rose from $444,000 to $674,000. That's an increase of $230,000 on a project in a city whose only community park is Lions Park, with its baseball field, basketball court and small tot lot.

The money came together in layers. Here is how the county laid it out in that 2024 memo:

The county's Parks Commission voted 7-0 on March 21, 2024, to recommend the extra $130,000. The City of Colfax's skatepark page gives a simpler version: a $175,000 grant, $75,000 from the county and more than $100,000 raised by Green Machine. Both versions describe the same project at different points in time. The county memo is the more detailed one.

The $100,000 in-kind line matters most. It means part of the budget was never going to be paid in cash. It depended on businesses donating material and work, and that's what happened.

The Historic Colfax Downtown Association says Green Machine responded to the higher estimate by redesigning the park with New Line Skateparks to fit the new number. Contracting took another round. Gold Mountain California News reported that the city received bids from Spohn Ranch and Grindline on November 20, 2025, and in January the council told staff to reject them and get pricing through Sourcewell instead. New Line submitted a $543,733 construction proposal on February 26, and the council approved it 4-0 at a special meeting on April 16, 2026. That figure was a construction proposal. It isn't the final total cost of the project.

Who showed up with trucks

After the contract was signed, the build moved quickly, and nearly every step involved a donated truck, load or crew. The downtown association recorded the work as it happened:

1. Late May: Teichert demolished the old structures, cleared the lot and started drainage work.
2. June 3: In what the association called the "dirt parade," Robinson's Sand & Gravel, Lorang Brothers, Hansen Brothers, Hyde Transportation and the Placer County Road Department hauled in about 550 yards of fill dirt in one coordinated push. Triton Construction then compacted it and shaped the rough contours.
3. June 8: Groundbreaking ceremony at the old pool site. Woodward Tahoe, already a $20,000 Gold Sponsor, added $15,000 more and became the project's first Elite Sponsor at $35,000. Best Western Colfax gave New Line's crew discounted rooms for their two-and-a-half-month stay in town.
4. July 14: The crew sprayed the first shotcrete into the main bowl. Teichert donated the aggregate, AA Concrete Supply and Livingston's Concrete Service hauled the concrete, Solomon Colors contributed, and Skate 4 Concrete worked on site with New Line. A crew from 900 Films filmed the build for a future documentary.
5. October 3: Public opening, ribbon cutting and demonstrations by pro skaters Miles Blackman, Mike McGill and John Worthington.

Crystal Howard, executive director of Skate4Concrete, told KCRA that all of the concrete in the park was donated. "Everybody in the industry had a tie to Colfax in some way," she said. "They saw the need. They love to give back to the communities that they serve." The city's page also lists Diamond Pacific and Hills Flat Lumber among the businesses that donated.

New Line has built roughly 400 skateparks across North America, Europe, Australia and Asia, according to the downtown association. Ty Conners, who led the campaign, told Gold Mountain California News that the firm had never seen this much community involvement in one of its projects.

Eleven years, and an earlier try before that

Conners is a Placer County Sheriff's Office lieutenant and vice president of Colfax Green Machine. He told KCRA that the idea started with complaints about kids skateboarding on sidewalks. He joined the nonprofit and began reading up on how parks get started. "I looked at Tony Hawk's foundation. How do you start a park? And then you just start from there," he said. "Look what happened 11 years later." He has never skateboarded himself, according to KCRA.

The city approved the Parkhill Drive site in March 2021 and approved the final plans in July 2025. Local kids and adults gave input on a layout meant to work for skateboards, scooters and BMX bikes alike.

The push started well before 2015. In 2006, a volunteer nonprofit called Skatepark Advocates of Colfax, with Thad Little as president, asked the City Council for a skatepark, according to a Colfax Record report archived by Gold Mountain California News. The site has its own history too. County records describe the old swimming pool as outdated and no longer up to code. Funds the county once set aside for a new pool were redirected to the splash play area that now sits next to the skatepark.

What's out there to ride

The bid drawings New Line issued in 2025 call for these features:

• A flow bowl and a separate mini bowl
• A mini ramp
• Banks and an A-frame
• Ledges, rails, stairs and a flat bar

The plans list operating hours as "dawn to dusk." As the days shorten into November, that leaves less after-school riding time each week.

On opening day, Gold Mountain California News described riders from "tiny tots on tiny bikes to teenagers and adults on scooters and skateboards," with older skaters helping younger kids get comfortable dropping in. Ben Bishoff, owner of Auburn's Bishoff Plumbing, brought his three kids and called the park "pretty impressive for a small community like Colfax." Brothers Jackson and Dallas Bowen told KCRA what it means for them. "We used to have to drive down to Auburn," Jackson said.

The piece still waiting on donors

The park opened before the project was finished. The next phase is a viewing area with picnic tables, a shade structure and 190 bricks engraved with donors' names. Conners told Gold Mountain California News that efforts to get grant funding for it are ongoing. Gaps like this one have been filled the same way all along: Green Machine asks, and the foothill businesses with ties to Colfax respond. Updates on the next phase are posted on the Colfax Skatepark Facebook page and through the Historic Colfax Downtown Association.

Conners summed up the effort for KCRA: "It was a village. It's not just me. I was the gas, but the rest of the car was everyone else."

Here at Stone Luxury Homes, we like keeping up with projects like this one, because they show how foothill towns get things built. If you want to know who's behind the next phase at Lions Park, or how to get your name on one of those donor bricks, we're happy to point you to the right people. Let's Connect.