Northern Suburbs Skatepark

At the Council meeting on 15 December 2025, Council resolved:

1. That Council adopt the following sites as the preferred skate park locations:
   • a) MacCabe Park, Wollongong (Site 2) as the Wollongong City Centre Skate Park
   • b) WF Jackson Park, Thirroul as the Northern Suburbs Skate Park
2. That Council notes the submissions received, and thanks all members of the community that participated in the public exhibition and engagement for both skate park sites.

You can read the complete minutes from the Council meeting here and have a look at the media release Green light for skate park locations at Thirroul and Wollongong | City of Wollongong.

Now that this has been endorsed by Council, we’ll be looking to progress the next steps in this project including design. If you want to be involved in further conversations about the skateparks or want to stay informed along the way, please subscribe for project updates on this page.

As you may know, we are working with Convic to help design the skatepark in the Northern Suburbs. Alongside a review of the community feedback that took place last year that many of you participated in, Convic are also undertaking site analysis for the new park considering the constraints and opportunities of several sites within the northern suburbs. The locations include the tennis courts near the train station and soccer grandstand at Thomas Gibson Park, MacCauley Park, WF Jackson Park, Pinecourt Park in Austinmer and Bulli Showground. With these locations that we’re considering, each come with their own challenges and constraints. It’s a matter of looking at each, and weighing up what risks can be mitigated, and where the community benefits lie.

You can take a look at the media release we put out last week with some more information - Next steps for the northern suburbs skatepark | City of Wollongong

Before the end of the year, we’ll share with you the proposed location, a draft design and seek further feedback on the plans for the Northern Suburbs skatepark.

We are dedicated to planning and delivering a new skate park in the Northern Suburbs. To ensure these projects meet community needs and expectations, as you may know, Council has been working with renowned designers Convic to conduct a detailed site analysis for the new park. This analysis considers community engagement, site constraints, and future opportunities and land uses.

Convic’s report is currently under review and refinement. Once finalised, it will guide the development of the skate park. Projects like this take time to get right. We want a facility that is going to be enjoyed by our community now, and also into the future.

We continue our commitment to making this new skate park accessible and inclusive, ensuring it meet the needs of women, girls, and gender-diverse individuals. The planning process will also look at aiming to improve a public space and enhance the overall community experience.

Council is committed to delivering skate facilities and they’re in our Draft Delivery and Operational Plan. The Draft Delivery and Operational Plan currently proposes that the Northern Suburbs skatepark construction will happen between 2026 – 2028. The adoption of the Draft Delivery and Operational Plan will happen in the coming months.

When we are heading towards the next phase of engagement that involves our community, we will be sure to reach out and invite you to participate. The next phase will be inviting you to comment on the draft concept design. We promise to keep you updated throughout this project.

There is a lot is happening behind the scenes for Thirroul Skatepark at the moment. We are working closely with CONVIC to go through all the feedback we heard between March – June this year. CONVIC looked at sites with us during the engagement period and they’re now working with us to consider what the community wanted, how it would work in the site and how that works with our budget.

We’ll be sure to keep you in the loop with further updates in the coming months.

From 9 – 24 May, we started our design process for the future skatepark in Thirroul.

We had 123 responses to the online pre-design survey and around 40 people attend the pre-design workshop with CONVIC at Thirroul Library in April. The online survey told us the preferred style of skatepark in Thirroul was a ‘Both Street and Bowl’, with a strong preference for some kind of bowl to feature in the new design. This was also a similar conversation that was had at the workshop.

The next time we go out to community will again be with CONVIC and will have roughly a 50 percent completed skate design. In-person and online engagement opportunities will happen again, including priority for targeted female and gender diverse engagement. We will let you know when we are planning to do our next engagement activities on the Draft Concept Design for Thirroul.

Thank you all for your participation in our recent topic on skateparks! We heard from over 430 people, and we are excited to be sharing back what we have heard from you.

Who we heard from

From 28 March to 1 May 2024, we launched the conversation with the community ‘Let’s Talk Skateparks’. We had 1.4k project page views during the engagement period and 430 commented using our survey and ideas board.

Here is a summary of what we heard from within our survey:

• Information about what suburbs is in each Ward can be found here - Ward 1, Ward 2 and Ward 3. The highest recorded suburbs of people who participated to the survey were:
  • Thirroul – 57
  • Wollongong – 27
  • Fairy Meadow – 19
  • Port Kembla – 19
  • North Wollongong 19
    
    

What we heard

• Shade, water and lighting are the top three favoured elements that should be considered in the design of the new skateparks.
• Modern skateparks should feature visually appealing, culturally reflective designs, cater to all skill levels with diverse obstacles, include essential amenities and be inclusive, accessible, and community-oriented, while supporting professional and competitive use.
• Good lighting, security cameras, open and visible locations, inclusive design for different skill levels, family-friendly spaces, essential amenities, community engagement, and aesthetically pleasing, well-maintained environment are all really important factors for a skatepark to have for the community.

If you want to read more, we have created an Engagement Report you can view that captures the feedback from the Let’s Talk Skateparks in more detail.

What happens from here?

We will use the information gathered from the ‘Let’s Talk Skateparks’ in a number of ways such as:

• Supporting the design process for the new skateparks in Wollongong City Centre and the Northern Suburbs
• Consider the data in any future strategies in Sports and Recreation
• Use the data to understand the audience in similar recreational spaces.

We will continue the conversation on skate parks with all participants who contributed to the Let’s Talk Skate parks engagement. The Engagement team will continue updates direct to those who opt in using email. To be added to the Skateparks Register of Interest, click the 'Stay informed' on this page. You will see future updates on the Our Wollongong webpage and our social media channels.