Group protests city plan to demolish Ballard skate arena

By Jessica Blanchard
Seattle Times staff reporter

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Skaters and city officials have clashed repeatedly over plans for the new Ballard park, which will be built on nearly 1½ acres at Northwest 57th Street and 22nd Avenue Northwest.

Both sides agree there should be a skate bowl within the new park. But that's about all they agree on.

The city plans to tear down the existing skate park and build a new bowl, which would likely be relocated to another corner of the new Civic Center park.

Skaters want to preserve the existing bowl and adjacent flat skating area, which were constructed about two years ago.

Kelly O'Neill, a roller skater who has advocated saving the existing bowl, doesn't understand why city officials are so resistant to the idea of keeping the skate park where it is, especially when estimates put the cost to build a new bowl at more than $100,000.

"We think it's a huge waste of taxpayer money to demolish something that works so well," she said.

But Dewey Potter, a spokeswoman for the city's Parks Department, said the bowl was always supposed to be a temporary structure. It was "pretty hastily cobbled together," is starting to show cracks and is not likely to stand up to many more years of use, she said.

"There's a lot of stuff wrong with it, whether they want to acknowledge that or not," she said. "It wasn't intended to last."

Parks officials have said the decision to build a new bowl already has been made, and it's past the point where minds can be swayed.

"We made a commitment to build a bowl they'll like and they'll use, but beyond that, they don't have a role in how it's built or managed," Potter said.
 
But skaters say they're not willing to give up. They've gotten used to fighting City Hall: Original plans for the new Ballard park didn't include any sort of skate area until supporters gathered nearly 4,000 signatures and won the support of several influential local politicians.

"Every time we hear, 'It's final,' we just know that we need to work harder," said Matthew Johnston, 33, a longtime skateboarder and member of the Puget Sound Skatepark Association.

Skaters have argued that the existing skate area would take up less than 20 percent of the new park, and that it's one of only two public skate areas in the entire city.

"This is all we've got," said Ryan Camarillo, 13, an avid skateboarder and a budding activist who says the Ballard skate park's atmosphere is unique. "No other skate park has brung the people together like this."

Parks department officials say they're baffled by the protest, the third this year. They say they've already compromised by agreeing to add a new skate bowl into the existing park plans.

"It's like, 'You won, folks.' " Potter said. "We don't want to argue with them, we just want to get on with this project."

Skate-park advocates, while not ready to give up yet, have submitted to the city a list of builders they would approve of to build a new bowl. They've also started raising money, which they plan to give to a local skate-park construction company as a subsidy so it can offer an unusually low bid to the city. A fund-raising golf tournament is planned Sept. 13 at Carnation Golf Club.

The bottom line is that skaters "aren't going to just let this go," Johnston said. "They are emotionally and spiritually invested in this."

Jessica Blanchard: 206-464-3896 or jblanchard@seattletimes.com