Seattle Sun Newspaper - Vol. 7, Issue 12, December 2003

Copyright 2003 Seattle Sun. Please feel free to use the article below in your research. Be sure to cite the Seattle Sun as your source.

Future of skateboard bowl

key to Ballard park plan

By JAMES BUSH

The ideal park for Ballard's civic center would include a spacious lawn, public art, large trees and ... a skateboard bowl?

Those are among the possible elements park planners will be considering as they develop proposals for the Ballard Civic Center Park, set to be constructed on the site of the former Safeway store at NW 57th Street and 22nd Avenue NW. The 1.4-acre site was purchased by the City in March 2001 and the 2000 Pro Parks Levy included $2.47 million in funding for park design and construction.

But the property hasn't sat vacant since its purchase by the City. It's the site of the Ballard Bowl, a world-class concrete skateboard facility built in early 2002 with the aid of a few City grants, some cash donations, and a ton of work donated by two top Northwest skate park design/build firms.

About 130 people attended an Oct. 28 planning meeting for the park, about one-third of them Ballard Bowl users who want to see it retained as part of the larger park project.

Micah Shapiro, who has been skating at the bowl for more than a year and works for skateboard skateboard maker Mervin Manufacturing at Fishermen's Terminal, said there is a world of difference between the bowl and the skateboard park at the Seattle Center. "This one here, the concrete part was built by skaters who knew what they were doing," he said.

The attention to details, such as the transitions between sections, make the bowl far superior to any other facility in the Seattle area. "Little things like that make or break a skate park," Shapiro said.

Park Planner Cathy Tuttle said that when planners hold their next meeting on January 13, "we will show designs both with and without a skate park element."

Tuttle stressed that no one is talking about turning the entire site into a skateboard park. "[The bowl] is an element, like a tennis court or a pathway," she said. " Admittedly it's an element that people pay more attention to."

Although no formal public testimony was taken at the meeting, participants could write short comments on Post-It notes and attach them to charts listing possible elements and activities at the park. These two comments neatly encapsulated the green space vs. cool place debate:

"A peaceful quite backyard for the all the nearby apartment dwellers," was the vision statement written by one participant. "No loud music. No noise from skateboards. Sorry kids."

"A nature park is not as cool a place as a bowl it's true," responded a bowl backer.

Of course there are more than two sides to every story. One non-skateboarder added this plea: "Give our kids a future, don't kick them out of every park. The skate park is integral to our community. It is a safe active area for teens."

Some participants at the meeting even wondered whether the site needs a park at all. Bill Elder is renting the former Safeway store from the City on a month-to-month basis. He said the large, enclosed space has already housed several events and has been made available to various groups at a low cost.

Demolishing the building "seems like such an extraordinary waste," Elder said.

Nate Waddoups is a member of a group of parrot owners who exercise their birds in the building on Tuesday evenings and Sunday afternoons.

"I think it would be great to keep the building," Waddoups said. "There's no other place like this."

While the skateboard bowl remains a solid contender to stay put, retaining the former grocery store is a definite longshot. The site was targeted for conversion to a green space by the Ballard Neighborhood Plan and the Ballard Civic Center Master Plan. It is located adjacent to the future site of the Ballard Municipal Center, which will include a new library branch and a neighborhood service center.

"Our starting point for the design of the park is based on that Civic Center Master Plan," said Tuttle. She added, "The Civic Center Master Plan was, of course, written before there was a skateboard park, as was the Neighborhood Plan."

The City also played a role in creating the skateboard park, although it was then identified as a temporary facility.

Pam Kliment, a parks department staffer who supervises Neighborhood Matching Fund projects in City parks, said the original plan was to build wooden skateboard ramps in a portion of the Golden Gardens Park parking lot. When liability concerns (based on the proximity of the proposed skate park to the railroad tracks) caused a search for a new site, the ramps were instead put in a portion of the old Safeway parking lot and momentum built among skateboard enthusiasts for the construction of a concrete bowl at the site.

Two skateboard park design/build firms, Seattle's Grindline and Portland's Dreamland, then got involved in the project and ended up donating much of their work on the facility, which would have cost at least $60,000 to construct. "We were really lucky to be able to work with them," said Kliment.

Grindline general manager Chris Hildebrand is now a consultant on the park planning project and says that, if the skate park ends up being displaced, he is at least heartened by the support he's heard for constructing a similar facility nearby.

"The point of the project," Hildebrand said, "was to demonstrate to the city that there was an interest in and a need for a skate park in the Ballard area."