Kickflip This House: Maple Ridge home's unique selling point is a massive skateboard bowl in the backyard
Credit to Author: Harrison Mooney| Date: Sat, 25 Jan 2020 16:22:00 +0000
A piece of B.C. skateboarding history is up for grabs — as well as airwalks, ollies and mctwists — in Maple Ridge.
The longtime home of a local skateboarding legend Kevin Dion hit the market on Thursday.
Just as there is no missing Dion’s influence on skateboarding, there is no missing the influence skateboarding has had on this house: Among the features of the five-bedroom residence at 20824 Stoney Avenue is a “massive south exposed rear yard with a professionally installed concrete skateboard bowl.”
It’s unique among single-family dwellings and typical for Dion, the founding president of advocacy group Vancouver Skateboard Coalition and the founder of New Line Skate Parks, which designs and builds skateboard parks all over the world.
Langley-based New Line is one of the top brands globally for installing custom municipal skateboard parks. Since its inception in 2001, the company has completed projects all over the world, from Sweden to South Africa to Chile, as well as most of Metro Vancouver’s skateboarding spaces, including the Vancouver Skate Plaza, designed and installed beneath the Georgia and Dunsmuir Viaducts in 2004.
But perhaps the skate park closest to Dion’s heart is the one closest to his home: the concrete bowl Dion built in his backyard in 2016 as a birthday present for his 13-year-old son.
The skate bowl replaced the traditional wooden vert ramps — the mainstay of the backyard since Dion’s childhood.
Dion and his six brothers developed their skills on skateboards imported to B.C. by their uncle, a long-distance truck driver whose route took him through Southern California just as the pastime was becoming popular.
Neighbours got used to the sound of the Dion boys catching air in the backyard and the use of the flat bars and jump ramps in the front.
Angela Stephen-Dewhurst, who grew up next door and is assisting in the sale of the house, said the home was a popular hangout when she was in high school.
The home remained in the family even after the boys grew up and started families of their own. It even served as the original base of operations for New Line Skate Parks.
“We used to design and build the course for Slam City Jam (the North American Skateboard Championships), and the business started in the backyard there,” Dion said.
Now raising five children of his own, Dion’s on the hunt for something bigger, preferably somewhere with room for his mother in the basement and likely another skate park in the backyard.
Dion said when the home sells, it be the end of an era. But will it be the end of the bowl? Dion has said that he’s willing to remove the structure if necessary, but he’s holding out hope that the new owners will appreciate it as much as his family did.
“It’d be pretty heartbreaking have to move that thing out of there, but it wouldn’t be the first time that a skate park got built and had to get torn out,” he said.
On Saturday afternoon Dion’s real estate team is hosting an open house that features two skateboarders who’ll show off the benefits of having a skateboard bowl in the backyard.
“I think whoever ends up there is going to enjoy raising a family of little rippers,” Dion said.
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