Seattle skaters want room for boards

Eight-year-old Isaiah Perry rolls up and down the Ballard Bowl, watched over by veteran skaters patiently awaiting their turn to drop in on their skateboards.

The older guys, some in their 40s, skate the bowl for upward of two hours, trying to slake their thirst for the sport. The bowl is busy, all day and well into the night.

Although Seattle is home to an estimated 20,000 skateboarders, the bowl is the only permanent public space where they now can skate legally in Seattle. Another skate park, at Seattle Center, will be gone by the end of the year to make room for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's world headquarters.

Because of organized lobbying by skate-park advocates, Seattle could follow Portland in building a system of skate parks — from smaller skate spots in every neighborhood to a regional skate park in every quadrant of the city.

The system faces an important test tonight, when the Parks Board is to vote on the siting of a proposed skate park in Lower Woodland Park. At 20,000 square feet, the proposed park would be five times the size of the Ballard Bowl.

The first of four large regional skate parks, it would be situated between Lower Woodland's baseball and soccer fields and across East Green Lake Way North from a residential area. It would accommodate different skill levels and styles of skateboarding.

Information

For photos and details about skate parks across Washington:

www.concretedisciples.com/
skateparksdb/display_state.php?state=WA

Learn about Portland's proposed citywide skate park system:

www.portlandonline.com/parks/index.cfm?a=96344&c=40148

Echoing a debate that took place last year in Portland, some neighbors say the skate park's location is just too close to their homes, while the ever-growing skateboarding community says the site would work well because it's visible and easily accessible.

The location "feels safer and friendlier" than a site near some woods just west of there and north of the BMX bike mounds, said Crystal Perry, 41, Isaiah's mother.

An advisory committee of skateboarders had recommended another site, near Aurora Avenue North, which the Parks Board rejected last summer. The parks staff then proposed a skate park closer to East Green Lake Way North, taking neighbors by surprise.

"If they put this project on the wrong site, it'll do tremendous damage to the future of skateboarding in Seattle," says Hans Bjordal, 36, who lives a little more than 100 feet from the proposed site. He understands the need for public skate parks, but worries that the sound of clattering boards, grinding wheels and loud rock music will raise the area's noise level.

The skate park's advocates, though, say traffic on East Green Lake Way North and people playing sports elsewhere in the park already generate noise.

"Every skate-park project brings out this small contingency of NIMBYs," said Matthew Johnston, 35, a West Seattle audio designer and skater.

"If the Parks Department is going to set the precedent where all you have to do is get 20 of your neighbors together, go to meetings and threaten to sue the Parks Department, the Parks Department is going to cave to these people at every turn, and skate parks are going to get jammed in these bad locations, and that's going to be bad for Seattle."

Yet others stress that the proposed skate park, like the smaller Ballard Bowl, would be a constructive use of public space.

"I'd rather see them do this than playing video games or doing drugs," said Becky Sundquist, who works in Ballard. "It's keeping them in shape."

Occasionally, a skater will turn on a boom box, which isn't allowed under city park rules. At the bowl the other day, a boom box drew a complaint from retiree Nadine LaVonne, 67, who lives in a condo nearby. "That music could be heard two blocks away," she said.

She says the Parks Department should have installed walls to separate skaters from other people at Ballard Commons Park. "There could be collisions if the kids are out there practicing in the common walkways."

Fun on wheels

Skateboarding first appeared in California in the 1950s, when surfers found that riding a two-by-four on the sidewalk generated almost the same sensation as riding a boogie board on a wave.

In the ensuing decades, the sport's popularity peaked and crashed in cycles, as each generation discovered it anew. Many municipalities treated it as an outlaw sport.

Today, skateboarding is one of the nation's fastest-growing sports, according to surveys by the National Sporting Goods Association, a trade organization. In 2004, the association estimated that 10.3 million people age 7 and older participated in skateboarding.

In 1990, Portland became the sport's Mecca when skaters built a skate park without a permit under the Burnside Bridge. And in 2000, Portland became the first city in the nation to legalize skateboarding on city streets, with Portland's mayor and City Council last year endorsing a plan for 19 skate parks, says Matthew Grumm, a spokesman for the city's parks commissioner.

Grumm attributes that skate-friendly political climate to the sport's long history at Burnside skate park, a proliferation of skateboard designers in the area and the maturation of the sport into a big-money business.

Also, "you have a first generation of skateboarders in leadership positions who can help the advocates push their agenda forward," Grumm said.

Skaters take initiative

In Seattle, speed-loving skaters have long lacked a place to play.

"It's kind of like a brotherhood," says West Seattle resident Thomas Maybee, 16, who frequents the Seattle Center skate park. "You're walking down the street and you see a handrail — but I see a skate spot."

Seattle City Councilman David Della will introduce a resolution at a Feb. 15 parks committee meeting to have the city hire a consultant to develop a master plan by January 2007, taking a page from Portland.

That city's consultant studied two skate parks and two parks without skating facilities, measuring noise levels at all four, surveying residents within five blocks and interviewing staff from 12 parks in Oregon and Washington.

The consultant concluded that the heavily used skate parks do not contribute to serious crime but do contribute to litter, noise and vandalism.

At both skate parks, the average noise level from 50 feet away was 70 decibels, comparable to a dishwasher. But beyond 200 feet, other noises drowned out the sounds. Neighbors were positive or neutral about the skate parks.

Like skaters in Ballard, who lobbied for a temporary bowl in 2001 and raised money to build the more elaborate one later, skaters in South Seattle are taking control of their situation.

The South Park Neighborhood Association, with the Tony Hawk Foundation, is building the first skate park in South Seattle.

The group so far has raised nearly one-third of the $166,000 it needs for the private, nonprofit River City skate park near Concord Elementary School.

Project director Mark Johnston, 35, says his volunteers are working hard to open the skate park by September. For now, enthusiasts must drive to Burien, Des Moines or Ballard.

The project, first proposed in 2004 by three Sealth High School guys, is now led by girls from Denny Middle School.

"They're putting the boys to shame," Johnston said.

"To have them keep showing up and really committed is really amazing."

Sanjay Bhatt: 206-464-3103 or sbhatt@seattletimes.com