The City of Surrey's Whalley is notorious for being one of the worst neighbourhoods in the Metro Vancouver area, but now the Chuck Bailey skatepark exists as a true diamond in the rough. It's the most expensive skatepark in BC to-date, and it's the first in Canada to be partially covered with a cantilevered roof to ensure year-round use. As New Line Skateparks president Kyle Dion points out, this ultra modern park is part of the bigger picture for Whalley.

"Right now, you cross the street and you're in the heart of the most ghetto part of Surrey," he says. "But then you look towards the other side of the SkyTrain tracks and it's all new developments. Within 10 years the area won't look anything like it does now. It'll be towers full of families."

Kyle continues: "They took this dead area of Surrey and totally animated it with the park. There's a community centre attached to it with youth workers, and the cops patrol it very regularly. They're pretty committed to making sure it works. It's same scenario as the Vancouver Plaza, where you have to look at the area in the context of its future development plans. Then you can see why it's a good place to put a park, and how it'll fit into the bigger picture."

The Chuck Bailey Recreation Centre was initially built as a "Preparation Centre" for the 2010 Winter Olympics, and the facility has since transitioned into serving the community, with the new skatepark acting as the multi-million dollar rec centre's integrated plaza. Doesn't hurt that it's SkyTrain accessible for those in other areas of Metro Van who want to get in on the action.

"Surrey is the fastest growing city in Canada, and they took a shot in the dark by throwing a Hail Mary recreation infrastructure proposal together in August 2010 that got accepted," Kyle explains. "Out of nowhere they had 1.5 million dollars of federal, provincial and municipal money to spend on a skatepark that's unique. We spend a lot of our time working on projects with tight budgets and size constraints, but this project gave us the budget and space to go wild. This is Surrey's 8th skatepark, so they've got more per capita than any other city in Canada."

Read on for a Q&A with Kyle Dion about Chuck Bailey's unique design features and "green" initiatives.

What are some of the details regarding Chuck Bailey's roof?
We decided that the most bang-for-the-buck way to add a roof is to cover a bowl. The roof alone ate up about $400,000 of the budget. Instead of it being a static structure, we wanted the roof to be cantilevered (extending outward with support on one end). We wanted people to interact with elements of the structure, so there's a big, skateable concrete pillar that prevents the roof from rocking during heavy wind loads.

Since this is the first roof New Line has done, how did you guys figure out an effective way to keep the bowl dry during the tricky west coast rains?
We spent a lot of time with the architects regarding the ideal height to accommodate the different ways it rains during the Lower Mainland winters. It's 14 feet high with a little bit of pitch to it. There's two zones that will get a little bit wet if it's really raining sideways, but under normal conditions the bowl itself and the coping area will stay dry. If there's a really heavy snow load, the slanted beams and cables will adjust to the extra weight of the big cantilever. There's quite a bit of engineering that went into the roof structure.

What are the dimensions of the covered bowl?
It's 6,000 square feet overall. The shallow end is about 4 feet that goes into a bank extension, then a corner that goes to about 5-and-a-half feet. There's a saddle, and that goes into a 5 and 6 foot section with an extension, before dropping down to 7 and-a-half feet with an 8-and-a-half foot pocket that goes over-vert. There's also 16 high-efficiency lights under the roof. I really wanted the bowl area to open up into the street area so you can ride in and out of it, and when it's raining it could function on its own.

(keep reading for the straight numbers and some video footage from the park)