A place to play
PANAMA CITY BEACH - As a spring storm rolled over the west end of Panama City Beach on Thursday, 7-year-old Chase Kehl gained steam on his halfpipe. He pumped his skateboard from side to side until finding the necessary momentum to launch himself into smiling acrobatics.
"He made this one up on his own," Brian Kehl said, watching his son roll into a particular trick. "He came home from art class and said, ‘Dad, look, a 360-bonus.'"
A former skateboarder, Brian Kehl appreciates his son's enthusiasm for the sport. He built the halfpipe that sits in the family's yard. Soon, there will be something even better.
The Bay County Commission this week committed to build a skateboard park at Pete Edwards Recreation Facility at Panama City Beach. The park should be finished by mid-July.
"I'm really excited the county stepped up," Brian Kehl said. "It's gonna be nice; the county's doing it right."
Bay County Commissioner Mike Thomas spearheaded the official effort to build the park. Thomas does not share the Kehls' affinity for the sport but said he has come to recognize that the skaters need a designated place to gather.
"I had a lot of people come to me and want to do this over the years," Thomas said. "You hope it's a fad. I've got three sons; all of 'em skateboarded. I've got a grandson that pushes one around and a granddaughter that watches him. It's not a fad, it's here."
Thomas said a skate park will serve the skateboarding community while decreasing the number of incidents in which skaters make use of public and private terrain. The commissioner said it is not yet decided if the park will be free of charge or require a small fee; the decision will be based on whether the park is manned.
The money for the skate park is coming from county impact fees. Recently, each commissioner was divvied out a portion of the fees to spend how they saw fit. Thomas chose to focus on the skate park.
"If he had said no, it never would have happened," Brian Kehl said.
Thomas said he hopes to be able to complete the project for less than $80,000. The county is aiming to save some money by doing much of the work in-house, with Brian Kehl handling the specialized aspects of the construction.
The skater-turned-contractor, businessman and father is no stranger to ramp building. Flipping through an old photo album in his house, Brian Kehl shared snapshots of a Virginia teenager in various states of wheel-driven flight.
"This is a 9-foot ramp," he said, pointing to a photo of a large wooden halfpipe he built with friends. "We had lights, a stage where bands would play. We would skate all night. You guys ever hear of Thrasher Magazine? Our ramp was in Thrasher."
The terrain planned for Pete Edwards is a little tamer. Brian Kehl said it would be ideal for beginning and intermediate riders and leave the door open for adding on more advanced aspects later.
"What I've tried to design with this is multiple skate areas," he said, unrolling a scroll of blueprints.
The county's skatepark will include a series of launch ramps and rail slides that may be moved and arranged, depending on the circumstances. There also will be multiple halfpipes, requiring varying degrees of skill, some of which lead into one another.
When Kehl's children began showing an interest in skateboarding, it reignited his interest in the sport. He put a board back under his feet, and it came back to him pretty quickly. But that doesn't mean he'll be frequenting the park he's building; he's found his body doesn't absorb an injury as well as it did when he was younger.
"I've got a golf membership at Wild Heron," Brian Kehl said, laughing off the consequences of one slip off the skateboard. "For three months, I couldn't even move my wrist."