Pouring Passion into the Oakland DIY Skatepark

In 2020, during the height of Covid, the pandemic quarantine set into motion a yearslong journey to develop a destination for skill, camaraderie, and engineering expertise.

That year, fighting cabin fever, Raul Casas and his college roommate began building wooden skateboarding structures and transporting them to an abandoned lot in Oakland’s Panther Hollow. Soon, skaters from around Pittsburgh, equally starved for community, began showing up, and with them came sounds that had grown foreign: laughter, encouragement, the whir of wheels on pavement, the click of a skater landing a trick.

Casas, then a mechanical engineering student at the University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering (BS MEMS ’22), established what today is the Oakland DIY, an officially recognized skatepark filled with concrete structures. In 2024, before Casas left Pittsburgh, he passed the project to another Pitt mechanical engineering student, Andrew (AJ) Haddon. Together, with tremendous support from the community, the two have engineered a thriving community place.  

Wood

Growing up outside of Philadelphia, Casas was introduced to engineering by his dad, an electrical engineer. “He would show me what he was working on,” Casas said. “His work is more computer based, but I’ve always been hands on and went into mechanical engineering.”

At 15, he started skateboarding and fell in love with the sport, which since the 1950s has connected fellow skaters from across towns and even the world. 

As skateboarding evolved, so did structures like half-pipes, ramps, rails, boxes, even stairs, which drew skaters to congregate to test their skills and find creative ways to land tricks. These structures would eventually form the crux of the Oakland DIY skatepark.

In 2018, Casas came to Pitt to study engineering. There weren’t many places to skate around Oakland, and after the pandemic hit, he decided to help change that. He built the first wooden structure and kept going. “As an engineer, I’ve always loved to build stuff.” 

As an engineer, Casas also knew that the wooden structures wouldn’t last long in the Pittsburgh weather. By 2021, he realized it was time to build something more permanent. And fortuitously, he was about to meet someone who shared his passion for building a skatepark.

Concrete

AJ Haddon’s interest in engineering started in Sandpoint, Idaho, where each summer the Chicago native would visit relatives who own a logging operation. As a boy, the huge trucks and excavators fascinated him, and his interest hasn’t waned.  

In 2022, Haddon enrolled in the Swanson School of Engineering after visiting Pittsburgh and realizing, as he said, “how cool the city was.” The day he moved into his dorm, he saw an Instagram post from a skateboarder. “They were pouring concrete and needed help.”

“AJ helped on every pour that we did,” Casas said. “Concrete pour days are exciting, and many people come to help, but the days leading up to them aren’t as fun. Fewer people show. AJ, however, was always there.”

Haddon, who started skating in fifth grade, loved it. He enjoyed constructing the forms and laying rebar and mixing concrete. He was meeting new skateboarders, learning more about the scene in Pittsburgh, and applying what he was learning in school.

Feature by feature, Casas, Haddon, and a team of dedicated skateboarders, rollerbladers, and BMX and scooter riders began transforming the abandoned lot into a connected series of concrete structures.

In the process, the two mechanical engineers became close friends. As Haddon said of Casas, “He mentored me through my first years of college. We had the same classes and professors. He taught me everything he knew about building the skatepark, and he left me with this huge project to finish.”

Community

“At first I had zero idea what I was doing,” Casas said, “but other skateboarders were coming here, old heads from Pittsburgh who had experience. I’m still so grateful for them.”

Casas also found that the skills he was learning in school would benefit the skatepark. He began designing new structures using computer aided design (CAD) software.

As Haddon became more involved and then took over the project, his engineering education was equally useful. In addition to using CAD, he investigated Pennsylvania building codes and city safety standards and load-bearing structures. He modeled complicated features using simulation software to uphold the standards.

“I was doing all the calculations,” he said. “I knew that we needed to overbuild it.”

Engineering a skatepark went far beyond modeling structures and mixing concrete. Casas and Haddon maintained GoFundMe and Venmo accounts, where they have raised more than $20,000 to build new structures. They’ve tracked down donations of concrete, railings, and even astroturf. They’ve managed builds. They’ve even begun hosting events with food trucks and bands.

Outreach

This fall, Haddon learned a new skill: advocacy.

During the summer, a Panther Hollow homeowner launched an effort to shut down the skatepark. For two months, construction was halted.

Before he knew it, Haddon was creating presentations to share with the Pittsburgh City Council. He organized fellow supporters to testify at a City Hall hearing to decide the fate of the park. Eighty supporters attended and forty, including Haddon, spoke.    

Their efforts worked, and the Oakland DIY is now a recognized park. It continues to grow and has even begun to attract pro skating teams who have visited while touring parks around the country.

“It’s extraordinary,” Haddon said. “I get to build something that I love to do. I get to skate it and see other people skate it and appreciate it.”

Although Casas now lives in Norfolk, Virginia, where he repairs nuclear powered submarines and aircraft carriers at the Norfolk Naval Shipyard, he still returns to Pittsburgh to skate the park that he helped build.

“We’re expanding, one corner at a time,” Haddon said. “There are still so many projects, but when we complete a new one, everyone comes and checks it out.”

He added, “Having a third place, a place that people love, is so important. Everyone needs their community.”