by PATRICK LEJTENYI
photos by JASON FELKER

More than two years after the Taz Mahal skate park was closed down and demolished, the city's skateboarding community has a new home. And if there's ever been a classic case of DIY entrepreneurship mixed with a lot of sweat and ideas, the birth of the South Parc skatepark is it.

Set to open next Wednesday, November 19, South Parc is a cavernous, brightly lit haven for the skateboarding set, stacked with grind and kink rails, ledges, ramps and enough transitions to ensure riders smooth, free-flowing sessions. And, for the vertigo-free, a massive vert ramp. With a 20,000-square-foot skating area complemented by a 7,000 square-foot mezzanine chillout area, the park's owner-operators are hoping South Parc becomes the centre of all things skateboarding in the Montreal area. Located on Brossard's Taschereau Blvd. - within skating distance of many of the South Shore's schools and businesses - the park is accessible to the island-bound by bus and metro.

But don't thank anyone except the owners, builders and money people - a contained group of about a dozen or so skateboard enthusiasts and promoters who got the project off the ground without any support from any level of government, corporate sponsorship or bank loans. The money, like the time, labour and incidental injuries, is all their own.

Team effort

The five people who sank $200,000 into getting the park open form a natural alliance. They are, in alphabetical order, Dan Cordeiro, 31, formerly of rave promoters 514 Productions; Valerie Chartrand, 29, a real estate agent; Frédéric Moussette, 27, a former student; Dan Vezina, 32, owner of the Spin skateshop on St-Denis; and Paget Williams, 35, head of production with rock promo collective Greenland. While there isn't a formal hierarchy, Cordeiro, Moussette and Chartrand will be running the park on a day-to-day basis and dealing with the books, with Vezina handling ramp construction and design and Williams taking care of the promotional side of things.

No one is claiming any more credit in South Parc's birth than anyone else, although Vezina had been hunting for a suitable site to build an indoor park ever since the Taz Mahal closed. But recurring obstacles kept getting in his way: lack of available space and money.

After almost two years of hunting, Vezina says, "I was getting a little bit frustrated running around meeting all these greedy landlords who just wanted to swindle me into a bad deal." Teaming up with avid longtime skater Williams put him in touch with Cordeiro, who, Vezina says, gave the whole hunt "a lot more structure and a lot more financing."

He also found that Moussette had the same idea of opening a skatepark in mind, only with a smaller budget. Moussette had been looking for a year-and-a-half, approaching various South Shore municipalities without any luck. Combining efforts, Moussette says, allowed him to "open something that was bigger than anything I could have created on my own."

Cordeiro found the empty space on Taschereau this spring. They knew that it was the place they wanted, even if it needed serious renovations. "We put in two months of intense work, seven days a week," says Cordeiro. The work included putting in new lighting, new plumbing, new wiring, building stairs and bathrooms and a fair amount of demolition (Cordeiro broke a finger recently when a brick fell on it). "We left the roof and the floor," Vezina says.

Wood meets cement

As for the ramps, Vezina already had a fleet of them built, but decided to rework them to suit the space. Most of them are built - of wood and masonite surface - and a bowl is in the works. The park's layout was designed specifically to offset the weaknesses the others found at the Taz. The goal was to recreate the design and feel of an outdoor cement skatepark but indoors and with wood.

"Cement skateparks traditionally are a little superior because their lines are everywhere and you can keep your speed," Vezina says. "I don't know what it is about Quebec, but we've always been plagued with these spaces where you're pretty much just stuck with this back-and-forth stuff. The way we're using this space is exactly like a cement park where you don't have to push, you can just cruise around and keep your speed. It's meant to look like a cement park. There's no sides to any ramps, you're always on a transition or on a wedge no matter where you go."

Vezina knows ramps. He's been building them, and running skate parks, since he was a teenager. He's ridden parks the world over and can tell what works and what doesn't.

"I'm inspired by the outdoor parks," he says, "like the ones in Vancouver and California. Something with flow - we've never had a skatepark in Montreal that's ever had any flow to it whatsoever. The problem with the Taz was the insurance. They insisted that nothing ever turn 90 degrees so there would be no collisions. They wanted everything in straight lines so you could see who's coming and who's going. It was just a retarded situation."

If you want something done…

The cover-your-ass ethic at the Taz was also encountered at city halls on the island and the South Shore, as well as among landlords. Most owners wanted safe, reliable, big-money tenants whose industry they could understand - like, say, the movies. "A big problem we had was with all the big Hollywood studios in Montreal scooping up all these large spaces with no columns and high ceilings," Vezina says. "There were so many places that I went to visit that had a studio next door that had someone else bidding. One particular space, the tenant paid 10 years of rent up front. It was a done deal in a day."

Cordeiro concurs. "You're trying to convince a landlord about something that they don't really have a point of reference for," he says. "They can't grasp the idea of having a business that has people coming in and skating all day. It's a tough sell to explain that, yes, we know what we're doing, yes, we have an idea of how we can make this work, we just need to have a little bit of faith."

Politicians weren't much help either. "When we talked to anybody from the city, it's all like, ‘Yes, yes, yes, we want to do things for the youth, we want to offer them a skatepark, we want to do this, this, this.' But ultimately they just throw the ball at you and say, ‘Come back with a project and we'll see what we can do,'" Cordeiro says. "It's more lip service, at the end of the day."

Vezina stopped dealing with the city years ago. "The city really hasn't done anything for skateboarding," he says. All, however, reserve special praise for the South Shore fire marshal, whom they say has been an enormous help in planning the space.

Ready to ride

After weeks of haggling over insurance, permits and a number of other headaches major and minor, the park is ready to open to the public. With a staggered session schedule, each session lasting two hours and 45 minutes, with some set aside for ladies-only, under-14s and BMX, and a legal capacity of 200 skaters at any given time, they plan on being busy. They have equipment for rent, lessons to give, memberships for sale, a reception room available, space on the wall to lease and two sound systems - one for the floor, another for the mezzanine - to be installed soon. All systems go, and all on their own dime. "It's DIY on a budget," Williams says.

Vezina hopes that South Parc will become more than just a skate park. "We want it to be a place for kids to come and hang out," he says. "It'll help create more skateboarders, and I think that's a positive thing."

South Parc opens Wednesday, Nov. 19 at 8100 Taschereau.
For more information, call 450-672-4884
or visit www.south-parc.com