Fuming skateboarders fenced out of popular Cowboys Park for music festival

Brendan Coulter · CBC News

· Posted: Jun 14, 2025 7:20 PM EDT | Last Updated: 1 hr ago

Local skateboarders are successful a tailspin aft uncovering fencing and scaffolding are blocking their entree to a beloved skatepark successful downtown Calgary.

The skatepark astatine Cowboys Park is temporarily off-limits to accommodate the long-running Cowboys Music Festival, which is scheduled for adjacent month. The fashionable section abstraction is Canada's largest outdoor skatepark, according to the city.

The precocious skatepark bowls volition stay unfastened successful the meantime, but the city's website said the beginner and intermediate bowls volition beryllium closed until astatine slightest July 30.

"It's a precise abbreviated riding season, truthful to bash this is conscionable wholly outrageous and unacceptable," said Calgary skateboarder and BMX rider David Hoare. 

"It's a nationalist park. It's a skate parkland … it's not a venue for drinking."

The cardinal parkland abstraction and hoops courts astatine Cowboys Park are besides closed. A connection from the metropolis to CBC News all amenities volition reopen aft July 30.

The Cowboys Music Festival volition beryllium held during the Calgary Stampede, from July 3 to 13. This year's lineup includes fashionable artists like Macklemore, Thomas Rhett, and Akon.

Hoare launched an online petition aimed astatine pressuring the euphony festival to wide disconnected the skatepark, which much than 1,800 radical person signed as of Saturday.

"There's decidedly a large assemblage of some skateboarding, bikes, scooters that predominant the park," helium said. "It's well-utilized, for sure."

There are nary different skateparks successful the downtown core, Hoare said, and a constricted fig of different spots successful Calgary wherever skaters tin spell instead.

Closure a 'punch to the heart'

The impermanent closure "threw a wrench" successful Ninetimes Skateshop's plans for its yearly Go Skateboarding Day lawsuit connected June 21. 

Jasper Westbury, who works astatine the Beltline store, said organizers are inactive looking for different location.

"It would person been bully if they considered Calgary skateboarding and skateboarders as stakeholders successful this situation," helium said. 

"A nonstop heads up — that adjacent would person been sick. Like we would person appreciated that."

Skateboarder Meghana Iyer said uncovering entree to the parkland restricted felt similar a "punch to the heart."

"This is simply a very, precise peculiar place," she said. "It seems counterintuitive to acceptable each of this up and fto radical conscionable enactment here."

Iyer doesn't person a car and said travelling to different top-quality skate parks would beryllium hard oregon time-consuming.

Gerhard Wilczek has been skateboarding at the parkland since it opened in 2000. 

He tries to skate astatine the parkland erstwhile oregon doubly per week, and was caught by astonishment erstwhile the impermanent closure took effect.

"Unfortunately, I'll person to get successful the car and thrust determination to spell skateboarding, whereas present I tin conscionable thrust my motorcycle oregon locomotion over," helium said.

"You've got to get retired and bask it earlier the autumn and wintertime get here. So July is going to beryllium pugnacious having to find different spots."

Previously known arsenic Shaw Millennium Park, the abstraction was renamed Cowboys Park aft the metropolis inked a 10-year naming and sponsorship woody with the proprietor of Cowboys Dance Hall and Cowboys Music Festival, Penny Lane Entertainment.

Using the currency from the sponsorship agreement, the metropolis began enactment to alteration the parkland successful March into a "multi-functional lawsuit space" that volition big "many different festivals."

Phase 1 of the project, which is connected intermission for the summer, includes improving utilities and electrical infrastructure, and adding a hardened aboveground to the lawsuit abstraction to accommodate radical with mobility needs.

CBC News reached retired to some Cowboys Music Festival and Penny Lane Entertainment, but did not perceive backmost by the clip of publication.