USA - Dallas, Texas: Step Inside This South Dallas Skate Park’s Edible Oasis
4DWN, a nonprofit skating, art, and food insecurity charity, partnered with Dive Coastal Cuisine to create an edible oasis.
February 25, 2025
The skate park at 4DWN includes two hydroponic gardens in shipping container. They are concealed by a porch and a blue skate ramp. Brian Reinhart
The skate park at 4DWN includes two hydroponic gardens in shipping container. They are concealed by a porch and a blue skate ramp.Brian Reinhart
There is a small triangle of South Dallas that is condemned, even more than some parts of the neighborhood, by the cruel judgment of urban planners. Its three sides are bounded by Interstate 30, Interstate 45, and the central rail yard where DART services and stores its train cars. These few blocks are loud from surrounding highway traffic, and hard to reach except by car, since every approach is dominated by bridges with fast drivers and swirling winds.
Look closely, though, and something beautiful is growing here. That’s not a metaphor. This pocket is home to one of Dallas’ most improbable urban gardens, hidden inside one of the city’s most improbable skate parks.
We’re at 4DWN, the nonprofit skating foundation and community hub founded by pro skaters Mike Crum and Rob Cahill in 2015. In that decade, the park’s scope and goals have expanded dramatically, from a calm hangout spot for area kids to a way for young people to get involved not just in sports but in art. And, yes, food.
In 4DWN’s back lot, concrete ramps are poured right up the sides of converted shipping containers. Inside those containers is a hydroponic garden, managed by a partnership between nonprofit and for-profit entities: the skate park and Highland Park restaurant Dive Coastal Cuisine.
One of the varieties of lettuce inside the 4DWN hydroponic garden.Brian Reinhart
Dive sponsored a cold food storage unit for 4DWN’s Food Rescue program, used to reclaim items that would be discarded by grocery stores. According to Cahill, “literally tons of food a week” are donated from groceries to be distributed across South Dallas via this hub. Dive owner Franchesca Nor, meanwhile, uses the hydroponic farm setup to grow greens sold for profit at her restaurant, where they’re called DiveDWN Greens. She also writes recipe cards to go out in 4DWN’s donated food boxes and plans to have culinary summer camps for kids. If Highland Park kids join the camp, their tuition fees will subsidize entry for South Dallas classmates.
“I’m basically the educator,” Nor says at the start of a tour. “We donate plants and education.” She points to a patio that looks, with its canopy of reclaimed wood, like a beach bar. “This will be a dinner party section. Being a restaurateur and an event person, I thought, ‘Let’s not make it a couple containers. Let’s give it a presence.’ They get to use it too, so it’s a win-win.”
Nor was looking for a space to put a hydroponic garden somewhere in Dallas, and the meeting with 4DWN Skate Park was, she thought, a perfect opportunity. For one thing, the sport runs in her family. “I grew up in San Diego with a bunch of skateboarders. The first restaurant I ever worked in was run by skateboarders.” Her son skates, too, and she was getting bored of sitting on a bench, watching.
She also knew something of the food challenges in neighborhoods other than her own. “I volunteered for the Juvenile Detention Center, and I couldn’t believe how many of those kids had never seen a zucchini, or eaten an orange,” she says. “I would say I’m privileged because my father, being from Brazil, just gave us a bunch of fruits and vegetables. No processed stuff.”
One of the two shipping containers that serves as a converted garden. Brian Reinhart
Thus the donated plants and education. The two shipping containers at 4DWN are being scaled up to grow about 1,200 plants a week, most of them lettuce (five varieties) plus a little bit of kale. A window in one container allows visitors to see what’s happening, while a patio deck built on top pulls double duty: event space and shelter from the sun. The containers are also well insulated, with antechambers before entering to prevent contaminants or flies from getting to the plants. The insulation cuts costs, as do strips of LED lights.
Nor has a for-profit motive, too. One that aligns with 4DWN’s work. She wants to test a business plan for a low-cost but healthy fast-food chain that would use small hydroponic gardens like this one to supply low-overhead retail stores. She’s in talks with fast-food industry consultants on how to make the plan viable.
“Exposing everyone to real, nutritious food is my goal,” Nor says. “My restaurant is in a high net worth neighborhood. I want to do modulars, small, unpretentious, that you can put in every town. Every town. They can be affordable, you can put them next to Burger King. My whole idea is having a commissary in a place like a rec center, like this, where we’re doing good for the community, educating the community, and this is also the place where all this food goes to all these different communities where they get exposed. That’s my final end goal. I’m literally testing numbers on how much salad I can grow, testing with my own restaurant and my own recipes. It’s real instead of trying to guess. A lot of people get investors and then see if it works. I’m getting real hard evidence.”
Her big plans for the future may or may not lead to a new food business, but they do include a commitment to 4DWN Skate Park and the unlikely community its skaters have started here, where the highways come together.
“Isn’t this amazing?” Cahill asks, as we look across the lot with its storage, garden, porch, and skate park. “We couldn’t do all this on our own.” Then he looks at Nor and cracks a self-deprecating smile. “And they like having us here too.”
One of the many happy guests at 4DWN. Brian Reinhart
Author
Brian Reinhart
Brian Reinhart became D Magazine’s dining critic in early 2022 after six years of writing about restaurants for the Dallas Observer and the Dallas Morning News.