Kyle Dion has been designing and building skateboard parks around the world for nearly 20 years, but perhaps his most special project lies in his own Maple Ridge, B.C., backyard.

The 7,200 square foot property on Stoney Avenue includes a full-size concrete skateboard bowl in the backyard, which has been used for decades by everyone from local teens to professionals of the sport.

Now the home is up for sale — skateboard bowl and all.

“Hopefully it stays and is used by the next family,” he said. “It would be a tragedy to have to take it out.”

Dion and his five brothers grew up in the home and turned to skateboarding as a way to keep busy in quiet suburbia.

Their introduction to the sport came thanks to their uncle, a long-distance truck driver who often drove through the skateboarding mecca of Southern California in the 1970s.

“When the trend really started picking up, he brought a bunch of skateboards back from California for the kids, so we were always playing around on them,” Dion said.

The boys quickly got some wooden ramps built in the backyard, attracting friends and neighbours until the home was a mainstay for the local skateboard community.

As Dion’s career progressed, so did his ambition. After starting the advocacy group Vancouver Skateboard Coalition two years earlier, in 2001 he founded New Line Skate Parks, which has built concrete parks from Australia to Sweden to South America.

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