UPDATE — A skateboard park will be constructed in the Woodside area with residents’ input on how to deal with big crowds and rowdy teens, reps with the county’s parks department announced.
Photo: Flippin sweet. Credit: J. Deseo/SSP
During a packed and sometimes contentious meeting last Wednesday night, department reps said they’d plan for the 3,000 square-foot ”skate spot” as part of larger schemes to renovate Woodside Urban Park on the northwest corner of Georgia Avenue and Spring Street. However, department reps said they will leave the door open to residents’ feedback.
And there was plenty of feedback inside the planning board’s auditorium that night.
“We’re not discriminating against skaters,” Woodsider Pam Wanveer told project managers. “We’re questioning its size. If all you [skateboarders] come after school, it’ll be overrun immediately.”
Casey Anderson, a Woodside resident and member of Silver Spring’s citizens advisory board, worried about the spot’s location within the park — sandwiched between a basketball court and a county building along Georgia, away from the street. That, plus the potential for boarders to ditch a crowded skate spot for the nearby playground, spelled trouble.
“Kids hang out at the park, where they drink beer in a place that’s not visible from the street,” Anderson said. “If the playground equipment is vandalized, there’s going to be a lot of backlash from the community, even if it’s one in a hundred skaters who has a beer and vandalizes the playground.”
Image: You're putting a skate spot where? Courtesy of MNCPPC.
But sidewalk shredding and getting stoned were incompatible, Silver Spring skateboarder Maryam Balbed argued. Other skaters at the meeting (they took up half the seats) defended the sport, saying it spared them a life of less savory activity.
The skate spot’s size also wasn’t an issue for skaters there. The activity doesn’t require lots of square footage, and even a small skate spot is better than tearing up and being chased off private property, Balbed told The Penguin after the meeting. Besides, it’s likely skateboarders would shred elsewhere if the skate spot got too crowded, she added.
If all goes well this winter, the park’s paddle-tennis court will be converted into a skate spot and ready for use by February, project manager Douglas Alexander spelled out. However, snow and other shit weather could push that schedule into March.
Updated Nov 10, 2009, to attribute the lede to the parks department, and to better reflect how the department will proceed with this project. — JD
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skateboarding is not a crime
Editor’s note: Skateboarding isn’t, but doing it on private property when the landlord doesn’t want you there is. — JD (Nov 10, 2009)
Since I am quoted in your post I want to clarify a couple of issues:
I support the idea of building a skateboarding facility in the park, but I don’t think the parks department has thought through the question of how to make sure it is sited in a way that minimizes the potential for problems.
And for the record, I do not believe that skaters are any better or any worse than any other group of park users. I think that if we have a lot more people in the park, a few of those people will be troublemakers, and that’s what the parks department needs to address in the way it designs the skate facility and plans for its operation.
The playground equipment in the park has been vandalized repeatedly and there is often evidence of alcohol use (e.g., broken beer bottles scattered around the picnic tables near the tennis courts). I think a major reason for the vandalism, alcohol use, and other problems is that the park is laid out in a way that many areas are hidden from view from the street, which prevents illegal activity from being detected until after the fact.
I also want to point out that contrary to what your story suggests, the parks department staff indicated that they will not move forward if the neighboring residents oppose it. The Woodside Civic Association sent the parks department a letter yesterday (Nov. 9) expressing our opposition until we can get answers to our concerns about how the facility will be designed and implemented. In other words, we have serious concerns about this project but hope and expect that they can be addressed in a way that will allow us to support it.
Casey Anderson
I hope that the skateboark park gets built and that the parks department does not listen to the nimby talk from the Woodside Civic Association. What does vandalized playground equipment and alcohol have to do with skateboarders? Not all kids are hanging out at the park drinking beer so lets not sterotype all kids. Most skateboarders I see are kids enjoying themselves and are not causing trouble.
After the meeting the kids voted with their feet. Did you see how they selected the steps and courtyard right outside the meeting room? Without adult/official encouragement or direction they showed us that the skatespot already exists. There is enough lighting for night skaters. The area would satisfy the planners three requirements: it is approximately 3,000 sf; it is already an impervious surface; and, it is actually in the CBD so it would satisfy the Central Business District Sector Plan requirement which a Woodside Park location wouldn’t.
A skatespot there could be in action as quickly as Parks can install the concrete modular structures, street-style obstacles to do tricks on. 30 kids can’t be wrong! And, the Planning Board will have the satisfaction of demonstrating how well a skatespot functions without an operator or monitoring.
Editor’s note: Mel Tull works the economic and commercial development beat for Silver Spring’s regional center. — JD (Nov 10, 2009)
This story is missing something vital like a “according to a press release issue today by MNPPC” or “a staffer announced today that..” — Where is the source of the opening sentence?
Thanks for your feedback, Casey. I’ve reworded the first paragraph to better reflect how the parks department will proceed with this project.
And I’ve added an attribution to that lede graf, Kathy.
Play nice, TJ.
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Ya know… of the many many times I’ve walked through swarms of skaters outside the metro on my way home from work… not sure I’ve ever caught one drinking. The fact that currently the park is used for drinking has little to nothing to do with what a bunch of skaters would do there… my guess is.. they’d mostly just skate there – call me crazy. In fact, the probability is higher that the people who go there to drink CURRENTLY would pick another place due to the obvious increase in lighting and foot traffic that the skate park would bring. There is absolutely no logic in saying “Group A currently uses the park for Activity B”, therefore building a facility for “Group C to do Activity D” will cause “Group C to use the facility for Activity B”…. it just doesn’t stand up to reason.
A skate park is a great idea. It would also be self-policing, in that if some of the kids started causing trouble for the neighborhood, a word from MoCo officials that any more shenanigans and the skate park would be closed would probably cause the non-trouble makers to threaten the offenders with all sorts of unpleasant punishments.