Shannon Turner interview
Shannon Turner is the co-owner, along with Craig Billingsly, of The Flow skatepark in Columbus OH. I had the chance to talk to Shannon during their camp this summer, and he was kind enough to share his insights into skatepark ownership, the state of the inline skating industry, and lots more.
Skate Columbus: So how did you guys start?
Shannon Turner: We (Shannon and Craig Billingsly) used to work together, ride together, snowboard together, and he was like “I want to do a park” cause he used to ride up at Chenga all the time, and I was like “well, I got some dough, let’s do a park”, and of course, the expense superceded the thought of having a park so, you just start slamming stuff together and got with a couple other friends and found a building that would allow us to have it in it. They gave us a six month lease with options for renewals because they didn’t think we’d make it. So instead of measuring out the square footage, they were like “you know what, you can have from these poles over”, but it wasn’t bad. Then we just started building and decided what we wanted and how everything worked out and we went through a bunch of different names for stuff, like for the park, one of the names was Rampa Room, just like the old Romper Room, stuff like that. It was just one of those things where now its…everything has a flow to it, so that’s how we came up with the name The Flow. We had about a quarter of the park built when we first opened it, and the first day we had about 135 people, and 15,000 square feet to skater or ride, and big open spaces, and you’re still trying to build just to keep it rolling. But we had to open to keep the money rolling to keep building more.
SC: So you guys did all the building yourselves?
ST: Yeah
SC: And you still do?
ST: Yeah, and that’s why we’re able to change stuff and keep it fresh. Our park’s still never done. We’ve been here (current location) almost five years, and there’s still ledges missing, there’s hits here, hits there, we’re still out there masoniting, getting metal on the bottom, our expense here is probably almost twice the amount of the old place. With that it takes twice the amount of kids. You want to keep the price low enough to keep kids in, but your costs are always going up, so you want to try to alleviate the stress of what’s on you. Craig and I just do it out of the love for doing it, so you have to try to come up with other incomes.
SC: You guys have been recognized nationally for your ramp designs haven’t you?
ST: We were like, the number one park in the country for probably 7 or 8 years for bmx, and I think we’re ranked number 4 now. A lot of that ranking is done by the pros, and it’s how much stuff changes, and if your park constantly moves and stuff like that. It’s all done by the industry, and that’s how you get rated. You get pros in a lot and nobody knows. We had one filming in here last night and nobody knew.
SC: Any big future plans?
ST: We hope to get a contract renewal (laughs)…there’s some pyramids and stuff we want to put in and some things we want to pull out. We’re going to pull that 5 foot quarter out that’s in there and break that spine apart, and change that whole area up a little bit and make it more skate friendly in general, with a hip in there, with a rail going up each side, it’ll flow a little better. Like I said, you’re constantly making changes, like the old place, you had poles that were 60 feet apart and you only had so many rows and you could build stuff in between them, and here they’re a little bit tighter poles in between, so you don’t get as good of transfer lines as you used to be able to at the old place where you could go in and out. That’s one of the things with this place where we came in, where we had the rhythm section at the old place, and you have parents who want to walk across the floor and get nailed, but that’s when they had the old video cameras without the side cams, so they’d be zoned out and get run into. A lot of thought went into putting the foam pit in the back to keep it out of the park because we had it in the park before, and you had a lot of issues with that. And having the skate area up front, because it’s mostly younger kids that come in that do the skateboarding, so the parents are closer to them and can see them all the time, for the parents that stick around, cause you don’t have a lot of that either. But the ones that do, they want to be able to check it out, and you want to try to keep them off the floor because they’re hard for everybody. I always try to tell them, “if you’re going to be on the floor, stay close to the poles” because everybody stays away from the poles. You don’t want to walk out on the field in the middle of a football game; the same goes for here. They’re moving much faster here. It’s hard because you don’t want to out-build your clientele. Right now we’re in a new group, I think we’re on our third group of 9 to 13 year olds, they’re coming into the sport, and the older ones start to move out, get responsibilities, jobs, college, and street is what they can afford instead of coming to parks, and you see them on rainy days. You come up with all the creative things to make money during the summer, contests, giveaways, lock ins, cookouts, rhythm contests, stuff like that.
SC: You guys have lasted a lot longer than most places.
ST: We want to make it to the ten year. We’re on our ninth now. It’ll be nine next July (2010), so hopefully we can make it to 2011. July 6, 2011 will be the ten-year. We would like to see a twenty year for sure, you just don’t know if things will last that long. Outdoor parks get beat up and we take care of ours, we can rebuild, where theirs is made of concrete.
SC: And it’s indoor, so you can skate in the snow and the rain…
ST: Yeah, you keep the patchwork going and…summers are hard, but you just try to make as much money as you can during the winter and stash it and try to rebuild what you can in your off season to make it fresh for the next year. Try to keep people involved and people want to have contests here, it’s like the inline contest, as long as people are still wanting to have contests here…we built certain stuff for inliners because they are out there, round copings and stuff that they like to skate so this works out great for a contest. Plus they like to hit the big boxes and stuff like that.
SC: I saw the Bittercold Showdown in 08 was really big, was that one of your bigger events?
ST: Yeah, the Dirty East is really big, It’s like a two day thing. That (Bittercold) was really good, it’s just with them trying to run a tradeshow at the same time, it’s tough cause you need a park and space, and that’s why they went to Modern this year for that reason but it wasn’t as fun for the skaters as this place was.
SC: Cause there was a bigger tradeshow space?
ST: Well, they had a tradeshow space that was available, It was in his shop before he puts a shop in. But, his ramps aren’t as big as ours, skate oriented, they don’t have as many bmx kids, so there’s a lot more wedges and stuff versus transitions and boxes and stuff that people like to fly over and transfer lines and stuff like that. If you can stimulate life back into the inline industry…cause it got kind of smoked because the skating industry, the people that owned the shops and the companies that provide for the shops were just not following up on what they needed to do and now its online. When you’re not selling it and making a profit…it’s like those brothers that skated vert, you don’t even hear from them now. Then the x-games dropped it. For the Bittercold, it was all fifty states. It was huge, but it was everybody. If they can stimulate the growth and get more people into it, it would be awesome. It’s almost like the whole scooter scene right now. There’s a bunch of those out there that are not able to get into parks and they’re killing it. Now they have all the aftermarket bars and stuff. Our insurance wouldn’t allow us to have it. We’re going to do a trial basis on it with our insurance company on Thursdays I think, to start allowing them in. Bars used to break, and you’re bent over so it used to impale you. So for us, you don’t want to take that risk for twelve dollars. At the same time, I’m probably getting 5 to 10 emails a week about it for the past four months.
SC: Can you regulate it?
ST: Well, that’s the thing, we’re going to try to do Thursdays. The problem is, a kid that skateboards that’s not very good, he can’t go everywhere, so you don’t have to worry about him injuring a lot of other people. But a kid on a scooter can go everywhere. It’s like young kids on bikes that roll over everything and run circuit tracks where they go around and around and don’t touch anything but the floor…they’re ones that are likely to get hit. You can’t see them, they’re small, you’re in the air, you come over, there they are. Or your flying over a ramp as a skater, and right there is a kid sitting on the floor having a picnic. So we’re going to try to do it on a trial basis, I think I talked my insurance into it so if that happens, it would be wonderful. It won’t be that great during the winter, but it will be awesome during the summer. As a park owner, you don’t really want to do it, but for the financial part of your business, you want to do it because it will make your business grow, and be able to build more stuff and better stuff, and be able to tear stuff down and rebuild stuff. So, for us, being that it’s just Craig and I, your finances are so tight that you want to try to make everything happen as much as possible. You’re not building all this for yourself, you’re building it for yourself and everybody else and you have to accommodate. So you hear a lot of people like “dude, I hate the Flow for this reason”, well I hate the Flow for a reason too. It’s not everything that I want to skate. And for Craig, it’s not everything that he wants to ride out there. Everything would be built differently if we even owned it individually, if we built it for ourselves. I don’t skate everything that Craig builds, he wouldn’t want to ride everything that I’d build. So you try to do it for the group, but it’s hard cause there’s so many things that people want to skate and ride and on top of that there’s things within that riding that people want to do. You just try to accommodate as many people as you can, and hopefully everybody has a great time.
SC: You have a lot of variety…
ST: There’s a lot of stuff that we could do differently, but the most fun stuff is wedges, boxes, pyramids, your basic stuff is where everybody has the most fun. You build some stuff out there that you have to be creative on or have to be really good to hit, it’ll sit there. We had that at the old park, we had that six foot mini with the spine, and its 15,000 dollars sitting over there that was getting ridden maybe twice a month, and taking up that amount of space and nobody really riding it, cause people were terrified at that time because it was beyond the level of the people that were attending. We’re going through that phase of the kids that are younger are better than the kids that were the same age five years ago because they’re growing up in these parks so they’re able to handle a little bit different stuff and a little bit more. And with they young age group, they’re like “I can’t drop into that”, but, yes you can, and in three months you’ll be killing it. I know a bunch of bmx riders when we first opened up that are from this Columbus area that are in videos and stuff…I remember those guys when they couldn’t even get up quarters, they would crash just turning around, and now they just kill it.
SC: So do you do a lot to get new kids coming in?
ST: Not really, it’s mostly word of mouth. Our park is so recognized, and being the only indoor…and even if there was another indoor in town, it would probably be tough for both of us, but we’d probably still win out just because of all the connections and the tours and accommodations. I rep for a few snow lines, and you know more reps and you know more people, because its all in the same end of it so, once you make those friendships and just trying to help our tours that come through…you just want people to keep coming.
SC: Well, thanks for letting me come up and hang out.
ST: Yeah, no problem.