NEVADA CITY, Calif. October 30, 2025 – The first skatepark design input meeting took place yesterday at the Miners Foundry. Interested skaters got a chance to express their preferences for skatepark features after Spohn Ranch Skateparks Project Manager Adam Eichorn’s presentation.
An exact access location and, for now, ownership of the property remain unclear. At publication time, only a letter of intent from Chris Anderson, the owner of the Tech Center (dba Bodhi Hive Collective), to donate the land from the Tech Center to the city has been approved by the city council in August of 2024. [page 275 of the linked document]
Eichorn, who grew up in the area, gave an overview of Spohn Ranch’s work and their philosophy of incorporating “some scalable art, something interesting, and that can tie into the heritage portion of the project as well.”
“This is the actual location of it. It’s hard to understand because there’s really no scale or map there, but what’s interesting about this spot is that it is very heavily wooded … We want to develop a welcoming space that is unique to the region. And when I say unique, I mean like, obviously Grass Valley is building a big park right now. Got a chance to check it out today, it is pretty darn amazing. Lots of transition, a lot of really cool big features. We don’t want to replicate any of that. We want something completely different in Nevada City.” Eichorn said.
The construction is funded by a Prop. 64 grant to the City and $750,000 have been allocated for the project. The nature of the site, being heavily wooded, will require a lot of prep work and Eichorn mentioned they might reach out to the community for help. In-kind donations of labor and equipment to clear and prep the site would be a way to supplement the allocated funding.
The city launched a 17-question community survey that gathered 120 responses. Going through the survey results, Eichorn noted a mix of street and transition features will be likely.
The skatepark will be an all wheels park, Eichorn stressed.
Asked about the planned size of the skatepark, he stated: “We have a $750,000 budget and skate parks in California right now are approaching the $100 square foot mark. So that’s kind of 7,000 to 8,000 square foot, I want to try to get that square footage up a little bit. The only way we’re going to be able to do that is by again, tapping into the locals, helping out with donations or site work and things like that. But to answer your question, I want to be really careful not to set expectations too high. I’d love to see a 10,000 sqft park in Nevada City. Maybe someday it will, as in separate phases. But we’re probably looking at somewhere in the 7,500 to 8,500 square foot.”
Neighbors of the project had questions about access to the skatepark. Eichorn said it wasn’t completely set yet but they are planning for access from the school campus, not from Reward Street.
Next steps
“The design team will start working on some concepts and I’ll have at least two concepts and we’ll come back and do another meeting similar to this, where instead of having custom boards, we’ll have actual concepts on screen.” And here we kind of dig into them, pick them apart, figure out what we like, what you dislike, which, what do you like about this one as opposed to that one.”
The timeline for the second meeting is sometime in January of 2026. Approximately six weeks after that, a final design proposal will be submitted by Spohn Ranch.
Geotechnical reports, permits and approval from the City Council are next, with construction starting in the summer/fall of 2026. Time to completion is approximately 12-16 weeks after the start of site preparation, Eichorn estimates.
The City has created a notification list (text or email) for interested parties to receive email or text messages about updates for the Skatepark Project.