Kids – and “big kids” – in the Middle Keys and beyond have a brand-new spot to test their wheels.
On June 23, the city of Marathon announced the soft opening of its new wheel park at Marathon Community Park, drawing skateboards, scooters, bikes and rollerblades for the first time since 2023.
Landscaping and irrigation work is still in progress around the park’s new features, from rails and quarter pipes to ramps and a “pump track,” but the new facility has seen dozens of daily visitors even in blazing temps since the day it opened.
“The kids just lined up,” Carlos Solis, the city’s director of engineering, told the Weekly. “I even had kids telling me ‘We live up in Key Largo, man, but this thing’s awesome. We’ll be here all the time.’”
Design and construction work for the $1.4 million park was completed by the Platform Group, which held workshops with local skaters to lay out their ideal visions for the completed layout. Costs to the city were largely defrayed by a $265,000 donation from the nonprofit Florida Keys Community Center, started by local entrepreneur Matt Sexton.
The build is a conclusion of an eight-year campaign for Sexton, who relentlessly pursued a vision for the new park and advocated for its recreational value to the city since 2019. Watching his own children at the park on June 29, though, he refused to take the credit.
“I’m just so happy for these guys – it’s awesome,” he said, pointing to more than a dozen kids circling the park. “This has been through three city managers, three city councils. We were doing summer camps here back in 2012 and watching the tiny (old) park degrade.”
He credited Christina and Tina Belotti for championing the original park. “That’s an essential name, because without them none of this would have even existed for the first time,” he said.
Landscape and irrigation work around the park should be complete in the coming weeks, Solis said, while an adjacent splash pad is about to enter permitting. There are plans to build a small restroom and concession stand to serve the redeveloped corner of the park.
And while mountains of concrete aren’t the most visually appealing, Sexton said muralist Claudio Picasso, one of the original skate park’s first contributing artists, is on board to bring an art installation to life across the entire finished setup.
“It’s a full-circle moment,” Sexton said.
The park is open from sunrise to sunset, with rolling closures and orange fencing used to mark areas still under construction. It’s open to all forms of non-motorized wheel sports equipment.
Photos by NATALIE DANKO/Keys Weekly
