Skateboarding has always been about more than tricks and transitions — it’s about community, creativity, and carving out spaces where everyone feels welcome. That’s why we’re excited to launch Dropping In with Mayor Blad, a new feature that brings civic leadership into the heart of our skate culture.
In this series, Mayor Blad joins us at Optimist Skatepark to talk about the power of public spaces, the importance of youth engagement, and the shared vision that makes projects like this possible. Together, we’ll explore how skateboarding connects people across generations, strengthens neighborhoods, and inspires pride in our city.
So grab your board, roll into the conversation, and see what happens when local leadership and skate culture drop in together.
Vision and early stages.
Skate Idaho: What convinced you that a skate park was a worthwhile investment for Pocatello?
Mayor Blad: I was convinced years and years ago that it was a worthwhile investment in Pocatello. I think people believe that, typically, skateparks are going to bring people who are less desirable in the community to that location, which I wholeheartedly disagree with. I believe that if you give people something to do, they’re doing it instead of what others don’t want them to do.
I’ve had a number of discussions about what kind of park we need – I’m talking about 10 years ago. A big park, or do we just need skatable art in different parts of the community? So I had gone from a large park to a whole bunch of different pocket parks, then just to some skatable art in different parts of town outside of the parks.
So the whole idea of having a skate park in our community was extremely important to me because we were missing a section of our community that didn’t have anything to do. I have to just be honest—we had a skate park, and I’ll put that in quotes, because it was as minimal as you can do. It was not kept up, quite frankly, a little bit dangerous, but it was a skatepark.
So when you start talking to different leaders in the community, “You’ve got a skate park. What do you need another skate park for? You’re wasting a bunch of money on this. You’ve got one out there.” And that kind of was okay for a while, I guess. People kind of bought into that. But I never stopped thinking, we need a skate park that is a real park.
So that’s why it was important. And then, if I go back two years ago, it was the first time that I was invited to a National Go Skate Day event. Quite frankly, I didn’t know there was such a thing. It makes sense that there was, but I didn’t realize that.
But then, when I was actually invited to a National Skate Day event, we had a proclamation for it, and so we went out there, and I was shocked and surprised. I was extremely surprised that there were a lot of kids out there. When you get out there and you see adults and kids rubbing elbows together, just focused on something that they love to do, I realized something probably more than I had ever thought before—this absolutely is one of the most important things we can do in our community, because we have mentors working with youth, and they are really doing great things together.
At the end of the day, that’s really what sealed the deal for me—when I walked out there and I saw what I saw. We should have had a new skate park 30 years ago. There’s no reason why we didn’t.
Skate Idaho: And that was the reason that we invited you out there. That was our first ever Go Skate Day Event, and that one we threw together like a month before. We just decided, we’ve got to make this happen and pull it together, and the Parks Department helped us get permits pushed through, and we were amazed at how many people showed up.
Mayor Blad: For a last-minute event, it was shocking to me to see the people and the ages of the people. I hate to say age and bring it up, but you’ve got 50-year-olds, and you have clear down to four, skating. To see the respect that these alleged delinquents had for a four-year-old, to let them go before they went, and an adult go before them, and vice versa, to see that… It’s a no-brainer.
Any community that doesn’t have a skatepark it should make it a top priority on their list to do. It’s literally a no-brainer.
Skate Idaho: Were there any misconceptions about skate parks that you had to overcome, either personally or within city leadership?
Mayor Blad: Me personally, if I’m being honest, probably a little bit. But I have a lot of trust in people, and so when I saw that, I was okay. I didn’t have an issue, you know.
I think there are a lot of rumors out there, and so there’s a misconception in leadership—city leadership. There’s definitely a misconception on what happens with a skate park, and what they’re doing, and how they’re going to react. They talk about graffiti, and they talk about drugs, and they talk about all this other stuff,, and it’s just 100% false.
So, were there misconceptions? 100% yes. I would say a little bit, a whole bunch on my city council’s part, and then neighborhoods.
The city council, we could work with, and we could get there with the city council. Neighborhoods—the misconception in a neighborhood was unbelievable. I’m sure you know: “You can’t do this here. We’re going to have vandals. We’re going to have all of these major problems.” And it’s just 100% false.
We don’t have any of that. But you have to overcome that. Somebody’s going to have to overcome it.
But we were able to work with the neighborhood over here, and the neighborhood eventually—after they realized and got past their misconceptions—was 100% on board. I love that. And they said, “We want it in our neighborhood.”
In fact, I said, “Look, I know Optimist Park is a great park, but we’ve got three or four other parks that would be good parks too. So where does it fit best?” And the neighborhood association literally started fighting for us to put it at Optimist Park. That’s awesome.
And so the neighborhood had to overcome the idea that, “Okay, we’re bringing all this negative into our community,” which is false, and realize that actually what they’re doing is a positive for the community. It’s giving—giving a place. A place for people, yes.
So that was interesting, though, to have the neighborhood arguing to put it in their neighborhood. Yeah. It made it easy.
Oh yeah, because every other park you would go to, as soon as it got out, somebody would go, “Washington neighborhood wants it.”
Partnerships & Collaboration
What role did community organizations like Skate Idaho play in shaping the project?
Mayor Blad: We wouldn’t have the project we have now without Skate Idaho.
We worked with Skate Idaho to get the right vendor for the skate park. We put on an open house for everybody to come in with several different ideas of what to do. And without Skate Idaho and without that help—I mean, I don’t know where… I don’t know what to do or how to build a skate park. I’m no expert, but I know that.
But I’ve got experts around us, so why don’t we use them? And so, to have their support when it came to looking at it—and they actually got to design—we had the skaters in our community show up to an open house. Typically, when you have an open house, you have four people show up and that’s it.
You sit there for two hours, three or four people show up, and then you twiddle your thumbs and you don’t really know what’s going on after that. And then it ends. When we had this open house, we had about 100 people show up. They were engaged, they were excited, they were talking about options—one, two, three, four, five… I think we had six options.
I can’t remember if we had that many or not. And then they started talking about putting options together and different things together.
And that’s how we ended up with what we have—because we had the support of the skaters. We had the neighborhood support because they came as part of the open house to see what it looked like and see what it would do. And then Skate Idaho literally came with some really cool ideas that weren’t on the plans.
We have a State of Idaho feature over there because of Skate Idaho. And that wasn’t part of the plan, if I remember right. And so Skate Idaho was a big, it had a huge influence on the park, as it should have.
You don’t want somebody who doesn’t know how to skate designing a skate park, right? You just don’t. You know, it wouldn’t turn out very good.
One of the cool things is we’ve got the bowl in there. And if I remember right, it’s got a four-foot bowl, and then it goes to six-foot.
Skate Idaho: How did this city and local advocates work together to build trust and momentum?
Mayor Blad: Well, in the city, we had a very supportive mayor. We had a city council member who was also a skater and very supportive.
And so, when you had both the mayor and a city council member who were very supportive of this, it kind of fell right into place. The rest of the council listened to their fellow city council member, and that’s the way it should happen. They should be listening to them, and they worked together on building this.
The mayor worked with the city council and the Parks and Recreation director to get things put together. And then it was a matter of getting the money and allocating the money for it. The only people who can allocate money for something like that are the city council.
And so luckily, we had Brent Nichols, who understands it. He’s seen it, he’s skated all over Idaho, in Utah, and who knows where else. And he completely gets it. He already knew what happens at a skate park, and the good, positive things that it has on people—kids, adults, young men and young women, and teenagers.
I mean, that’s what’s so incredible about a skate park—you literally hit every demographic you can think of. You’ve got wealthy and you’ve got poor, and they’re skating together. You’ve got old and you’ve got young, and they’re skating together.
Nobody cares what religious beliefs you have. Nobody cares where your origin is, where you came from. They don’t care.
You’re just skating. And it’s an incredible place. I know I’m making it sound like utopia, but it probably is. Everybody that’s out there on that concrete? I think it is. I think it is. It is.
You get to go there, and you get to escape any issues that you have at home, at school, with your friends. Any issues that you had with them kind of go away when you’re at the skate park and you’re just skating. It makes it a better community.
Skate Idaho: Were there any unexpected allies or champions who helped push the project forward?
Mayor Blad: The neighborhood.
Neighborhood—very unexpected to have the neighborhood come out, because typically people will say, “It’s a great thing, yeah, we need it… just not in my neighborhood.” You know, we call them NIMBYs—Not In My Backyard.
But the reality is, this neighborhood stopped and really, truly worked with Councilmember Brent Nichols, and they worked with me. We talked to them about it. I think—I don’t know if they reached out to any skaters or not—but we talked to them, and the more we talked to them and the more we explained what we had seen and what we see happens, the more excited they got.
And so we had zero pushback from the neighborhood—but that’s because we had done a lot of legwork before. They went from, “Yeah, I don’t think so,” to, “Wait a minute, this is an asset. This is a great, great asset for our neighborhood.”
And so, surprising? Yeah—100 percent, the neighborhood.
Leadership & Lessons Learned
Skate Idaho: How did the process of building Optimus Skatepark differ from other civic projects you’ve supported?
Mayor Blad: It seemed to go easy and smooth.
Other projects that we’ve done, we’ve asked people to give us time to do it and get it done, and then we get criticized as the project’s being built—that it’s not going fast enough, or if it’s going too slow, or it’s not the right size, it should be bigger, it should be smaller.
We have another project that was in Parks, where we literally sat down with the group and they told us exactly the size that they wanted and we needed it, and we allocated the money for it. We did that, and we were done. They were upset. I heard nothing but complaints because it wasn’t big enough, it was too small,the llights were in the wrong place—even though we put them right where they told us to put them.
The skatepark—it was amazing—because we said we were building it, we did a ribbon cutting, we said it’s going to take X amount of days. I think it was a week or two longer than that. It might have been about the same time. We did have some weather issues—it snowed, it rained a little bit—but at the end of the day, they finally got here.
We asked people to come by and see it, but please stay off of it once they start pouring concrete and stuff. We moved a lot of dirt in there, they started pouring concrete, and we asked, “Please stay off, please give us time.” And they did. They literally stayed off because they didn’t want to ruin something already. Instead of being, “I want to be the first one to drop into a bowl or something,” they waited.
We had National Go Skate Day come, and I know very well everybody was itching to be there because it was so close to being done. But it wasn’t done yet. And I remember asking them, “Look, we’ve had to ask a couple of you to not get on it, and I know it was nobody here, but please stay off of it. We’ve got a couple of weeks.” And they did.
We couldn’t get that kind of support or that kind of partnership in probably any other civic function that we do. We’re building a park right now, and we don’t see that kind of respect. We’ve built a number of different things, and it’s complaints—it’s this, it’s that, it’s not the right color, it’s not this.
None of that happened here. What happened was 100% respect for the process and for the end results, and that’s what you got from our skaters. Very impressed. Very, very impressed.
Impact & Legacy
Skate Idaho: What impact have you seen since the park opened on youth, families, or the broader community?
Mayor Blad: Well, I know—let’s start with the broader community. I have had more than I can count discussions with people that I did not think would be supportive of a skate park, who are excited to see a skate park there. They’ve been by it, they see people in it, and they’re excited.
As we were going through it, you had some people go, “Well, it’s a waste of money, it’s this and that,” and all that stuff. Everything’s a waste of money if you want to make it that way—yeah—if we’re really being honest.
But those same people have since driven by it and they’ve seen how active it is and how many people are there. And they see the demographic that is showing up to the skate park. It’s not high school dropout kids that are just showing up over there while school’s on so they can skate. They’re not doing that. They’re seeing the respect of the community and stuff.
In fact, when we had the ribbon cutting, I think it was one of the largest ribbon cuttings we’ve ever had. It was unbelievable. We had 200-ish, maybe more, people at a ribbon-cutting. That tells me people are excited about it.
So, the impact on our community it’s had an incredible impact on the community. It’s all been positive.
When it comes to families, I don’t know if I can really speak to families, quite frankly, because I don’t have a lot of friends that have skater kids and that are skaters, and so I don’t know what that is. But I can tell you what I assume, because what I’ve seen is I’ve seen parents and kids skating together. I’ve seen kids riding their bikes with their scooters and their skateboards over to the park, with other kids following them. I mean, I’ve seen that with my own eyes.
And so, has it had a positive impact? 100%—a positive impact. These kids are excited about it, and they’re taking care. The kids I’ve seen going over there—if I was to go to a park and I see these kids that are 18 to 22 or 23 years old, I might be a little concerned if I see a 10-year-old wandering over there with a batch of four or five other 10-year-olds to hang out with these guys or to do whatever, you know.
At this park, you watch them go over there and you watch these older kids work with them and talk to them, and treat them like equals. You don’t get that in other places, but you do at the skate park. And I mean, it brings back a lot of humanity to me. Absolutely. I love it.
Skate Idaho: Has Optimist Skatepark influenced how the city thinks about future recreational or public space projects?
Mayor Blad: I think so. I think that it has. I think it’s actually added a feature to parks that we had never thought about before.
I mean, we sat down here a minute ago, and we talked about skate parks at two different parks today already. And I have a feeling, because we have one here, that those two parks will be easier to get a skate park in. And we’ve talked about what size we need and things like that.
And I think it’s all relative to what the skaters in our community are looking for. I think it’s important to build it so that you can add on to it if needs be. You need a nice big skate park somewhere, but somewhere else you might not need one that big—but build it so you can add on to it.
Absolutely. If you build one, I don’t think it’ll be difficult in other parks to get this done.
Skate Idaho: What does the skate park represent to you personally, now that it’s part of Pocatello’s landscape?
Mayor Blad: I think it represents the heartbeat of Pocatello, quite frankly, because Pocatello—sometimes we’re divided—but we really, truly are a tight-knit community, and we come together when there’s something that we need to come together on. And the skate park has shown me that people are coming together.
If we look at the politics throughout the country, throughout the state, throughout the city—right now, we’re divided. The skate park is somewhere that’s bringing people together. It doesn’t—like I said before—it doesn’t matter your age, your color, your religion, your political affiliation. It doesn’t matter anything—male or female—it doesn’t matter.
It pulls that community together. And this is something… our community has gone through a pretty rough patch a few months ago—a very rough patch. This skate park is pulling it together. And even for the people who don’t skate, it’s pulling our community together, and we’re becoming a good city.
The city that we’ve always been—we’re just realizing that, yeah, we are okay. Even with differences and different things happening, we are okay, and there are places for us to go and do whatever we need to do.
Looking Ahead
Skate Idaho: There’s already been some discussion of Phase 2. What are your thoughts on that?
Mayor Blad: We built it on purpose so that we could expand it. And so we will expand that. But I’m just as excited about putting another skate park in a different area as well.
We talked a little bit about—yeah, we have a large one here—but maybe have a couple smaller ones in a couple different areas. I love the fact that it shows we need it, because you have a brand-new one here in Optimist Park that has kids from, I mean, sunup to sundown. I honestly think in the middle of a rainstorm, we’re going to have kids out there. I really do think that’s going to happen. I think when it snows, you’re going to see some kids out there—maybe not on boards, but on a bike or something—probably doing something.
One night I drove past it, and it had a bunch of kids in there and a bunch of people. I shouldn’t say “kids” because the demographic is across the board—over there skating. And I drove past the other one that we have that’s old, and I still had a dozen people over there skating.
It tells me that we need another skate park. We need one on the south end of town, and we need one on the north end of town. We’ve got one in the middle. Do they have to be as big as this one is? Not at all. But it gives kids and adults an opportunity to go and spend time. It gives families an opportunity to spend time.
You know what’s interesting—kind of get on a sidekick here—I started a thing because we have kids and we have adults that stare at our phones, and we text, we play games, we don’t communicate back and forth. So we started this program called Disconnect to Reconnect.
I go out there and I see kids not on their phones. Absolutely. I see kids getting exercise. I see kids communicating. And if I go to other places, you don’t see kids communicating. They don’t know how to talk to each other. They don’t know how to talk to adults. The adults don’t know how to talk to them.
But you pull them together with one simple thing that they’re focused on, and all of a sudden, you can’t text and skate at the same time. And so they don’t have their phones with them, because if they fall off their board, they break them. So they put them down.
To me, mental health is a big deal. And it’s been proven that because of how much screen time we have, it’s created a mental health crisis in our country. And I’m just begging people to put their phones down for an hour, put their tablets down, stop staring at their screen on their computer, and start talking to family members that they’ve not been able to talk to for years. Yep. And that’s to break this cycle.
Go out with friends, get out and walk around the block. That’s what I’m asking them to do—put it away for an hour a day. You go over to the skate park—they don’t have their phones—and they’re working on their mental health. I believe that. 100%.
And they’re learning how to talk to adults, and the adults are learning how to talk to kids again. And they’re working together, and they’re helping each other. And if something happens, then they’re taking care of each other. This is something that they take a lot of pride in, and I honestly believe it is helping the mental health of our youth and our adults in Pocatello right now.
Skate Idaho: What advice would you give to other mayors or civic leaders considering a skate park in their city?
Mayor Blad: Reach out to the people who are using the park. Reach out to the groups that are interested in the skate park. Get a design, introduce it to the neighborhoods, and work with the neighborhoods to understand and know what really happens.
Don’t believe the stigmas. Don’t believe the stigma of what you’ve heard—rumors of what you might believe—because they’re simply not true. Our skate park polices itself.
We’re very proud of it, and our skaters in Pocatello are extremely proud of this park. And it does police itself. If something happens, it will be taken care of. I’m 100% confident that if something happened over there—some graffiti of some sort—it’s going to be taken care of by the skaters, not the city.
These kids that you hear are “questionable at best” are absolutely incredible people. They’re incredible. I don’t care what they look like. I don’t care how they act anywhere else. When I see them at a skate park, they are absolutely top-notch, and I would claim them as my own any day of the week because they’re that good.
They have trials. They have a hard time. Work with them. Get what they feel is best for your community—because it won’t change in 10 years. A bowl is a bowl, and they’re going to work with that bowl. It’s not going to change. That feature is always going to be used.
Use that. Work with them. Make the community a part of it. And build a skate park. Fund it. Figure it out. Build a skate park—because it’ll make your community a tighter-knit community than what you’ve got right now. I’m 100% convinced of that.
