On a blistering Tuesday evening, over 100 city officials, community members and skateboarders huddled in chairs under Highway Interstate 10.
On the southside of Cushing Street below the underpasses, the community sat across the construction of Arizona’s first shaded skate park.
Mariachi music and skateboarding echoed in the underpass before city officials spoke.
Vice Mayor Lane Santa Cruz addressed the crowd and spoke on the importance of this groundbreaking, which was supposed to have happened last summer.
“In early 2021, I brought to a study session to gauge support for activating this underpass,” Santa Cruz said. “The direction we got was clear. Mayor and Council was enthusiastic to fund this feasibility study, do the public outreach, and get a concept design moving.”
But the original pitch and founder of the skate park is Caleb Guitierrez. He remembers first getting this into motion in 2016. At the time he was working at a Vans shoe store and submitted a project for the Vans Passion Project.
“I had an idea to submit a passion project for the park. It wasn't it wasn't about me, it was more about the skatepark in the community,” Guitierrez said. “So it started to bloom from that.”
Guitierrez has held many fundraising and community events for the skate park over the years. He sold merchandise from each year at each skating event.
“There's probably a shirt for every year at the skatepark, being ten years,” Guitierrez jokes.
Guitierrez also spoke at the groundbreaking event on June 30. Although he was nervous, he talked about how much the community chipped in to donate, design and designate this park as a connection to downtown and the Mercado District.
Approximately $2,648,258.67 was secured through city funds and public donations.
Jacqueline Ortiz with the Mayor’s office spoke on behalf of Regina Romero.
“We are super excited to have this project not only underway, but to have an actual space for the community of all ages to be able to skate and ride. This is very exciting,” she said.
Ortiz and Santa Cruz both spoke on their own personal growth with skateboarding recently, citing the skatepark’s progress has intrigued them to try the sport.
Bruce Roberts, a skateboarder with Boarderlands and Tucson Skate Park Alliance, said that in college he wrote an essay on the Cushing Street Skatepark when Guitierrez had first pitched the project in 2016. The location, he said, is optimal.
“Having it underneath the underpass is so important because it's so hot out here,” he said. “It's going to be a long-lasting park, I know that for sure.”
Sierra Boyer with the Parks and Recreation in Tucson said that the groundbreaking is more of a “symbolic one” as construction already started in early June of 2026 for electrical installations.
“If you go to any government building or business building the number one thing is ‘no skateboarding allowed’” Santa Cruz said. “We know our skateboarders have been asking us ‘well, where can we go?’ This is where they can come.”
Santa Cruz also mentioned that difficulty in communicating with Arizona Department of Transportation (ADOT) and Federal Highway Administration (HFA) before getting the greenlight in June.
Six gold shovels were placed in the granite pebbles and people lined up to dig into the dirt, cheering with every subsequent groundbreak.
Guitierrez was excited after the groundbreaking saying that “a lot of talent” will come out of the Cushing Street Skate Park for the next generations of skateboarders.
Over the next six months, the park will be under construction and be finally open to the public in late December 2026 or early January 2027.
