Bolton Valley Resort CEO Lindsay DesLauriers wishes she’d put more thought into breaking the news that she’s closing a popular indoor skateboard park to make way for tennis and pickleball courts.

Bolton workers and locals started hearing rumors last weekend that the park would be dismantled. By the time DesLauriers confirmed those tales on Tuesday, a petition with nearly 1,000 signatures was circulating in support of keeping it open. Another 300 people commented on an Instagram post about the decision.

The feedback to the plan was fierce and unequivocal.



“Fuck your tennis court, for real,” one commenter wrote on the change.org petition, which had nearly 1,500 signatures as of Wednesday afternoon. “How is a tennis court better?”

“What a gut punch!” former Bolton employee Colin Brown wrote on Facebook. “You have no idea what you have or what you’re doing to the skate culture in Vt ... Way to marginalize our culture.”
In a community letter about the decision, DesLauriers wrote that pickleball, which has recently surged in popularity, is something "that our hotel guests as well as the local community can all enjoy and make use of." And, she wrote, removing the skateboarding equipment will allow the resort to use the big, open space for events and conferences.


In an interview, DesLauriers said she was taken aback by the reaction, and hurt that so many employees were among those who voiced their dismay. On Wednesday, she apologized to Bolton workers for surprising them.

“It’s clear to me now that this was one of those things that merited a broader discussion both to inform our decision making process and to keep all of you — our core community — fully in the loop,” she wrote in a Wednesday morning email to staff.

Bolton Valley created its indoor skate park in 2018 when it imported wooden ramps, a large bowl and other features discarded by the shuttered Talent Skatepark in Burlington. The space at Bolton originally held tennis courts, according to DesLauriers, whose family owned the resort years ago, sold it, then purchased it again in 2017.
“It was a space that was being underused at the time, and this was an opportunity to do something cool,” she said on Wednesday.

The indoor skate park — one of just a few in all of New England, according to regulars — grew in popularity. College students bought passes to Bolton’s recreation center to use the park; families brought their kids there.

“Definitely, a scene organically grew around it,” DesLauriers said.

It wasn’t a huge scene, she noted — the resort is about 40 minutes from Burlington — but there were often 40 people at a time zooming around the obstacles. It's open on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays through September 30, when it will close for good. That final day, Bolton will host a fundraiser for the planned Waterbury Skatepark.

A few petition respondents noted the paucity of things to do for the young in Vermont.

"There are plenty of other options for people to play tennis inside in this state but an extremely limited (2) places to skate inside," one signer wrote. "You want youth to stay in VT? Be welcoming to them and embrace their needs too."
Talent Skatepark, which closed in 2018, has reopened. But it’s not big enough to house the skaters in Burlington and central Vermont who used Bolton, several skaters said, including University of Vermont student Andrew Blower.

“Talent is a decent-enough park; a lot of people like it,” he said. “But the layout isn’t that great. And it’s not nearly as big as the Bolton one.”

And unlike the Bolton park, it doesn't allow bikes. David Hennessey, who launched the petition, also prefers Bolton's layout to Talent's.

Skateboarder Spencer Davis had been thinking about moving somewhere warmer to escape the winter even before Bolton announced its decision.



“I don’t have a whole lot of options in the winter for skateboarding,” said Davis, a real estate photographer. “I was kind of on the fence about leaving, but this settles it.”
DesLauriers was at the National Ski Areas Association conference in Washington, D.C., this week when the furor erupted. She and general manager Nathaniel Mathes plan to meet with staff at the resort on Monday to answer questions. But she stopped short of saying the park might win a reprieve.

“It would be wrong to raise that expectation, because I still think it’s kind of, long-term, probably the right decision for us,” DesLauriers said in an interview. “But I want to hear what people have to say.”

A few of Bolton’s critics see the decision as part of a larger gentrification that is under way in Vermont and at its ski areas, many of which have been purchased in recent years by large out-of-state corporations.
"They just don't like having the skateboarders around," UVM student Zach Howenstein said. "They want to change it for aesthetic purposes."

But DesLauriers noted that Bolton is a family-run business that strives to keep its prices within reach for Vermonters. It's the go-to ski mountain for budget-conscious locals.

“We’re trying to survive in an environment where other ski areas have millions and millions of dollars to invest in infrastructure,” DesLauriers said, noting that removing the skateboarding ramps and obstacles would open up the space not only for pickleball and tennis but also for other events.

She said the resort is working to rehome the skate park features.

"If we had the resources and space to support it all, we would," she said.

Correction, September 21, 2023: A previous version of this story misattributed a quote to David Hennessey.