Binary Skatepark Shuts Down

Yes, it’s true, Binary Skate Park in Draper, Utah, is no more. If you’re interested in buying a bunch of well-built skateboard ramps contact Brock or Sean at brock@binaryskateboards.net or sean@binaryskateboards.net respectively.

Continue reading if you want more of the story.

So you probably went to skate the other day because it was raining, and you noticed the skate park is closed, and there’s nothing inside. Well, it’s a simple tale. Here’s how it goes:

Tangible and Intangible Expenses

I don’t know what the rent for Binary was, but based on past experience I would guess it’s at least $5,000 per month. That’s pretty tangible.

The ramps cost $60,000 to build. $30K in wood, $30K in labor to hire the Woodward guys to build the stuff. That’s tangible.

Then you’ve got utilities too. Probably around $300 per month.

Then you have to have somebody to watch the shop. Most of the people who did this probably did it for free or something, but that gets old, you know? Who knows, maybe they were paying people, or at least giving them skate stuff. Plus it was taking time away from other things, like selling decks, which is what Binary Skateboards is really all about, not running a skatepark.

Income

What would you need to bring in just to break even on the skate park? We’re not talking about making money, we’re talking about just paying the bills and not being able to pay yourself a dime. If you expensed the ramps over a 3-year period, about the time they would last before needing to be rebuilt, you’re looking at about $7,000 per month.

At $5 per kid, that means you need to get 1,400 kids in that park per month. If you’re open six days per week, that’s about 60 kids per day. If you’re open eight hours per day, that’s 7 and a half kids per hour.

Reality

Over the past several months, I’ve been to the park quite a bit. Of course it’s been summer so there hasn’t been much rain. On a day when it’s not raining, I’ll usually find between 0 and 4 kids there, and most of the kids there on a non-rainy are kids that I don’t think are paying to get in. I think they know the owners. It didn’t matter whether it was day or night.

When it was raining, then they would get between 30-50 kids in there at once. In other words, rainy days are great for the park, but sunny days are horrible.

To make a long story short, the park was losing thousands of dollars every month during the summer, and during the winter they were bringing in just enough to pay for the place. That means over the past year they lost a lot of money, and there isn’t really any way to fix it unless you can make it rain more. If you had a business that was losing money, and there was no way to fix the problem, what would you do? Well, that’s what they did. That’s business. Not much you can do about it.

Last weekend they moved all the ramps out to a barn in the country somewhere. I doubt they’re rideable. I think they’re just in storage. But if you want to buy them, make Brock and Sean and offer. You could have a nice spine mini ramp in your backyard for a few grand.