Skate Park One Step Closer To Reality

But Compromises Disappoint Some

Clara Sturak
Associate editor

   In a move that pleased some and angered others, but was generally considered a victory for the skateboarding community, the Santa Monica Recreation and Parks Commission voted 4-2 at its Thursday, June 20 meeting to approve the building of a long-awaited skate park.
   Although many who spoke at the meeting lobbied heavily for the skate park to be located at the beach – considered to be the birth place of modern skateboarding – the Commission voted instead to take City staff’s recommendation and approve Memorial Park as the location of the 30,000 square foot facility.
   Memorial Park, located on Olympic Boulevard and 14th Street, is home to the Santa Monica Police Activities League (PAL), several baseball diamonds, and a recently-added children’s play area.
   That location was chosen for several reasons, including the fact that finding a suitable site by the beach would entail approval from the California Coastal Commission, something the City often attempts to avoid.
   Recreation and Parks Commissioner, Neil Carrey, told the Mirror, “Building at the beach would mean dealing with the Coastal Commission and the state, which would add years [to the project].”
   The other key factor is that the City has already set aside $570,000 to build a skate park, money that could “disappear if we don’t use it now, especially in a tight economy,” Carrey said. The Commission, he felt, was not willing to take that risk.
   If the proposed skate park is approved by the Santa Monica City Council, it would be built just east of the PAL gym, where the children’s play area currently stands, which led to complaints that the Commission is wasting money – by essentially undoing improvements that have just recently been made to the park.
   Carrey defends the decision as a result of bad timing, not bad planning, explaining that both projects had been in the works for “a long time,” and that it would be unreasonable to have held off on the children’s area, “because you may someday decide to build a skate park there.”
   Although the children’s play area will have to be moved north of its current site to accommodate the skate park, the recently purchased equipment will not have to be replaced, so the only new costs incurred will be in the moving, Carrey said.
   Commissioner Doris Sosin, who cast one of the two “no” votes, believes locating the skate park at Memorial Park is a mistake. Although she agrees that a skate park is needed, she questions the appropriateness of Memorial Park, especially, she told the Mirror, because “there will never be the parking available [to accommodate everyone.] It’s already jammed.”
   There are no plans to add more parking at Memorial Park, in fact, “there is no place for it,” Sosin says.
   Sosin argues that moving the children’s play area north, just adjacent to the parking lot, is asking for problems, and is worried that Memorial Park will become “a facility, not a park. I’m concerned that we are building wall-to-wall concrete.”
   She is also distressed about the fates of several “magnificent Mulberries and Pines” – trees that will have to be destroyed, or at the very least moved, to make room for the children’s play area once the skate park is built. But, she says, she understands why the majority of Commissioners voted for the skate park. “What they are trying to do is to jump, and to do something very sweet [for the community].”
   Meanwhile, skateboarders of all ages, some of whom have been advocating for a skate park for almost a decade, are one step closer to finally having one – just not the one they wanted.
   The City Council will vote on the project at its July 9 meeting.