words and photos by Alex Fazekas-Boone

My friends Edgar, Spencer and myself were skating around downtown Tacoma, filming as usual. We were mostly just dorking around and decided to go look for a new spot. We were driving down a block we had all passed several times before, and the block had this big slab from a building that had burnt down. The foundation walls were still partially up on three sides, and we all thought maybe it was spot… Wallie in? A gap maybe? Somehow none of us had ever actually stopped to look at it, and for whatever reason, that day we were like, yo, let’s pull over real quick and check this out. 

We parked, hopped out, and immediately realized the slab was insanely smooth, since it was originally the inside of a building. It was like perfect perfect. But it was also pretty disgusting. Trash everywhere, needles, rubble, fire debris, random junk piled in every corner. We grabbed our brooms and started sweeping, blowing, scraping and cleaning as best we could. Once we cleared enough of the surface to see what was really there, we noticed on the street side there was a twelve inch tall foundation wall running the length of the east side, and it could maybe be made skateable. It was beat up from the fire and demolition, but maybe fixable? So we just started. No plan, no big idea, just doing what we always do; find a new spot, try to fix it up to skate it, and if we’re lucky maybe get a clip. Over the next few days we all just kept showing up, cleaning, hauling out bag after bag of trash. We ended up with dozens of bags of trash and moving wheelbarrows full of rubble, bricks and dirt. Eventually the slab was clean enough to skate. We patched the chunks of ledge, grinded it down with grinders, and steel sticked it into shape. Then we sealed it and waxed it. It wasn’t great, but it worked! 

The next addition was this concrete ledge I had built at home. It was an experiment. I had poured a concrete counter top type thing, so it could be hauled in and glued onto cinder blocks. After that I hit up a couple homies to see if anyone could make a round flat bar for us. I knew from my skate advocacy work that the most requested obstacle in all of Tacoma is a round flat rail, and somehow still in 2025 not a single park here in the whole city had one. Some friends of friends came through, built us a flat bar for only the cost of materials, and we installed it. It was perfect, twelve inches tall and eleven feet long. And that is when things really took off. 

A few people started donating ramps. A quarter pipe showed up. Then a bank. Then another quarter. I built another manny pad / ledge out of trex decking. Someone brought a curb. Within a few weeks we had a complete low impact modular skatepark. It felt like Perry Park meets ‘The Courts’ or ‘Tompkins’. People started showing up every day. A solid crew of locals formed. People came after work, kids came after school. Everyone was welcomed in, even the scooters, roller skaters, bikers. Neighbors came and hung out just to watch and talk. A whole community sprung up out of nothing in a matter of weeks. It honestly felt magical, like we had stumbled into something bigger without realizing it. 

During this whole thing the neighbors had been watching us clean the abandoned lot and build the park every day. They were incredibly supportive. They helped us sweep, brought down their yard waste and garbage bins for us to fill, helped us haul shit, and would stop by daily just to talk and hang out. It seemed literally every neighbor and business owner around the spot was stoked on what was happening. It was not just our project anymore, it had become a neighborhood project. 

Eventually though, we found out the property owner was not feeling the magic. Her maintenance guy JJ came by one day and said, “hey, just so you know, she is pissed.” He said he thought it was dope, but said she didn’t get it and was concerned about liability and getting sued. We brushed it off at first and kept skating. Then he came back. And came back again. Finally they told us they were coming in two days to haul everything out unless we removed it ourselves. So at the end of June 2025 we pulled everything, stored the ramps and started to plot the next move. We drove up and down every street in downtown Tacoma and took note of every potential new spot, but truly none of them would really be as good. Once the ramps were gone, the property owner said she might be open to letting us continue if she had absolutely zero responsibility or liability, and that we met her financial asks. 

Right as we were losing the park, I had reached out to our local skate nonprofit Alchemy (who I volunteer with) to see if they would be down to help. They were only two blocks away from Fawcett, so it seemed like a perfect pairing. The board voted and said if we could raise two years of the potential costs, they would take on the project under the nonprofit including insurance, lease, maintenance, admin, etc. In my mind, that was the moment this became possible. With Alchemy willing to be the lease holder and carry the liability, all we had to do was raise enough to cover what the property owner was requesting. As soon as news spread we were getting kicked out, a few of the neighbors started emailing and calling people on our behalf, like city council, parks, the local news, the mayor, really anyone who could help. We did the same on our end. I sent endless emails, texts, calls and had lots of meetings. I brought park and city staff to see the place right before it was demo’d to show them what we had built with so little. Eventually one of the neighbors helped us land a News Tribune story, and so we launched a GoFundMe as the idea of making this legit started to feel real. 

After months of back and forth between the owner and Alchemy, we finally landed on a deal: a one dollar per year lease, and we pay the triple nets. For anyone who does not know, triple nets are taxes, insurance and maintenance. Once we knew the target number, we updated the GoFundMe and went back to the community for the final fundraising push. People showed up big. The neighbors and Alchemy campaigned for us and helped pull in two large donations, one from the Annie E Casey Foundation, one from the South Sound 100 Giving Group, and the rest of the funds came through individual donors. Watching people rally around this and support it, not just with physical work of cleaning and building, but in putting up money to keep it alive was unreal. 

By early November 2025, four-ish months after getting kicked out, we finally had a signed lease in hand and all the funding secured for two years of operation under Alchemy. We signed the lease on a Thursday night, checked the forecast and saw we had a tiny break from the rain that very weekend. The next morning we were out there immediately sweeping, hauling trash and cleaning everything (it had gotten bad again pretty quick). Then we brought all the ramps back, truckload after truckload, and rebuilt the entire park in basically two days. On Saturday we announced we were having an impromptu opening jam the next day Sunday Nov 9th. That opening day, hundreds of people showed up, hung out and skated. We had drinks and BBQ’d for everyone. The session went into the night and we brought out lights and skated in the dark. It was so cool to see after all the drama and work, that Fawcett DIY was officially a real thing. Officially legit. Officially back. 

This project couldn’t have been done without the contributions from every single person who helped clean, build, promote and fund this place. It was truly a community effort, and I can’t thank everyone enough for making this thing happen.