A Waxhaw property that doubles as a private skatepark has hit the market for $1.75 million, backyard concrete bowl included. The listing covers a five-bedroom home with a private guest wing, hardwood floors and 20-foot ceilings, but the real draw sits just outside: a hand-shaped concrete bowl that professional skaters have ridden for decades.
According to Axios, the home also includes a walk-in scullery, a screened-in brick porch, a sports court, a fish pond, detached workshop space and a 150-foot creek running through the property. The seed listing describes the home as covering 4,710 square feet with four and a half bathrooms, while a separate Compass record identifying the property as 8412 Sars Field Court lists 3,700 square feet of above-grade finished area, 3,700 square feet of total property HLA and 5.5 bathrooms — a discrepancy the available records do not resolve.
The property belongs to Tom Risser, president and CEO of U.S. Bottlers Machinery Company, which makes equipment used to fill plastic bottles, the station notes, as reported by WCNC. Risser started skating at age 13, per Axios, and his first backyard project on the land was a 6,040-square-foot wood-and-metal ramp. Years later, that ramp gave way to something more permanent.
From Plywood Ramp to Concrete Dream
Risser bought the five-acre Waxhaw property and eventually added a 3,000-square-foot concrete skate bowl in his backyard, according to Axios. “My ultimate dream was an indoor concrete place near the ramp. My wife said go for it. Well, 26 years later, the ramp is long gone, but the dream survives,” Risser said, per the outlet's reporting.
The bowl itself, sometimes called the combi bowl, combines a 6-foot-deep square pool with an 8-foot-deep kidney section, and it contains roughly 80 yards of concrete, Axios reports. Skatepark designer Wally Hollyday traveled from California to build it, and construction took eight days, according to the same account. A separate description from Juice Magazine details the shape further: a 6-foot square bowl with a 4.5-foot shallow end hipped over a 3-foot mogul into an 8-foot kidney, with the whole thing measuring 45 feet by 60 feet. Risser has written that Hollyday was on a flight to North Carolina within a month of the two trading design sketches, while Risser began digging the hole himself.
A Visit From Skateboarding Royalty
The bowl's reputation reached beyond Waxhaw. Tony Hawk visited to film a segment for ESPN2 and reportedly praised the bowl as better than many skateparks he had ridden, according to Risser's account relayed by Axios. WCNC separately reported that Hawk showed up with a group of friends and skated there for a full day, describing the structure as resembling an enormous kidney-shaped in-ground swimming pool that turns out to be a perfectly smooth skateboarding bowl.
Risser's creative streak extends well past the bowl. He has used scraps from his bottling-machine business for sculpture projects, welding large metal pieces in his backyard shop, WCNC reports. Those sculptures now populate gardens on the Waxhaw property and elsewhere in North Carolina, and public television's Carolina Impact notes he has helped build public skate parks with sculptures in Pineville, Matthews, Waxhaw, Wilmington, and as far away as France. He remains an active skater, the program notes, channeling that energy into fostering creativity at his company.
Looking Ahead to a New Chapter
The Risser family has lived on the Waxhaw property for 35 years and plans to pass it on, Axios reports. Risser has said he intends to keep skating nearly every weekend at a DIY park in South Carolina. “If you build it, you have to share it. We hope to continue to share this magical place with future generations, so that it continues to inspire one way or another,” he said, according to the outlet.
That next project is already underway. Wrightsville Beach Magazine reports that Risser and his wife, Daisy, have built Heartseed Gardens on 80 acres near Liberty Hill, South Carolina, featuring more than 75 of his sculptures and a 13,000-square-foot concrete skate park as its centerpiece. The magazine also notes he recently purchased 14 acres near West Jefferson on the New River for another planned sculpture project.
Back in Waxhaw, the listing is held by Megan Despard of Dickens Mitchener & Associates, according to Axios.
