The skatepark at Tanner Park spent its last years losing an argument with its own surface. This week the Town of Babylon officially opens its replacement: a park rebuilt in poured concrete on the Copiague waterfront, finished just in time for the skateboarding contest that calls it home to run on fresh ground this Saturday.

The fencing around the rebuilt park has already come down, and skaters have not waited for a ceremony. Riders have been carving the new bowls for days, and clips of first runs have been making the rounds on local skate accounts since the concrete cured.

What the town built

Town records show Babylon awarded the rebuild this spring in a contract worth just under 1.7 million dollars, with the work going to Laser Industries, a contractor based in Ridge. The money bought a wholesale change in what the park is made of. The old setup was the familiar suburban compromise: prefabricated ramps set on an asphalt pad, a design that ages badly because asphalt breaks down under sun, salt air and wheels. The new park is poured-in-place concrete, the standard that modern destination skateparks are built to, shaped into bowls, banks and street features with steel rails and ledges set into the pours.

Concrete matters more in skateboarding than in almost any other sport a town builds for. The surface is the equipment. A cracked, sinking pad does not just slow riders down, it shakes them off their boards, and it is the reason skaters will drive past three neighborhood parks to session one good concrete one. Copiague now has the good one.

Saturday belongs to Tanner Jam

The timing is no accident. Tanner Jam, the annual contest its organizers call Long Island's longest running skateboarding competition, is set for this Saturday, September 26, at the new park. The format, straight from the organizers at R.A.D. Boardsport Co.: free skate from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., contest after, with local shops and sponsors on hand. Their announcement made the stakes plain, billing this year's edition as the first contest on the brand new park.

Expect claims to be staked. A new park is a blank record book, and every local skater knows that the first person to land a trick on an obstacle owns it until somebody tops it. The first Tanner Jam on new concrete is exactly the kind of session people talk about for years.

The record holder behind the jam

The name attached to Tanner Jam is Chad Caruso, the Long Island pro whose relationship with this park runs through every edition of the contest he has helped organize. Caruso holds the Guinness World Record for the fastest crossing of the United States on a skateboard. He set the mark in 2023, pushing coast to coast alone in 57 days, then broke his own record this June, rolling from Venice Beach, California to Jacksonville, Florida in 39 days between May 1 and June 8. His 2023 crossing raised more than 48,000 dollars for addiction recovery causes, a total the town itself celebrated when he finished.

That a rider of that profile keeps coming back to a town park in Copiague says something about what Tanner Park is to South Shore skating: not a destination attraction, but the home spot, the place a generation learned to push. On new concrete, that history gets a second lap.

The park around it

The skatepark sits inside Tanner Park, the town's sprawling waterfront spread in Copiague, with its beach and boardwalk on the Great South Bay, ballfields, bocce courts and the bandshell that hosts the town's free summer concerts. The town has been working down a list of upgrades there, and the rebuilt skatepark follows new basketball courts into service. A single capital season has left one of Babylon's most used parks meaningfully newer than it was a year ago.

For riders, the practical details are simple: the park is part of Tanner Park's regular grounds, and Saturday is the day to see it at full tilt. Whether you skate or just want to watch a rebuilt town park get properly christened, the free skate starts at 11 a.m., and the best view is anywhere along the rim.