City officials continue wrestling with options for a new skate
park as they prepare to close Morgan Hill’s sole refuge for local
skateboarders and BMX bikers.
Morgan Hill – City officials continue wrestling with options for a new skate park as they prepare to close Morgan Hill’s sole refuge for local skateboarders and BMX bikers.
Parks and recreation commissioners earlier this week indicated they want the city’s proposed 15,000-square-foot park to be modeled on the existing facility on Butterfield Boulevard, according to Steve Rymer, director of the Recreation and Community Services Department. Rymer said the current facility, now five or six years old, has run its “life cycle” and is schedule for closure by the end of the year.
Skateboarders will go without a skate park for an “indefinite” period of time, Rymer said, depending on how long it takes for city officials to plan and construct a second facility on Edmundson Avenue.
“It’s going to be a mixed -use facility at this point,” said Parks and Recreation Commissioner Marilyn Librers. “We have not figured out the logistics of how to do that – certain times for skaters, certain times for BMX. We turned that back to the city to come up with answers.”
That means staff must examine liability issues, hours of operation, and whether staff will be required to run the facility or if they can rely on signs, to name a few aspects of the project. Rymer stressed that no final decisions have been made about who gets to use the facility.
“In this design process, what we are still trying to determine is should the park be designed solely for bikes, solely for skaters, or for both,” he said. “And we don’t have the answers to that yet.”
City officials have worked with local teenagers who use the existing skate park to come up with ideas for the future facility, as part of a process that began more than a year ago.
In August, local skateboarders weighed in on seven blueprints supplied by Site Design Group, a Carlsbad consulting firm. The plans depicted in-ground concrete parks of various shapes, sizes and themes, and served as a springboard for skaters to map out their own visions, which ranged from curvaceous patterns and bowls to urban styles with steps, rails and plaza-like features.
Isela Banuelos, a senior at Sobrato High School and vice-chair of the Youth Advisory Committee, said it was unfortunate that her classmates might have to go without a skate park for a while.
“I have friends who skate and I know it’s a big thing in our community,” she said. “I know kids would go to the community center and skate around and be asked not to, and they really need a place to go … But I think the new park will be worth waiting for.”
The final plan for the park, which is expected to cost $600,000, was due in October. Parks and recreation commissioners are expected to resume discussion of the park concept and operational model at an Oct. 16 meeting, and staff will present an update on the project to city council Oct. 17.
The current 8,000-square-foot facility on Butterfield Boulevard was originally scheduled to close in 2005. City officials have kept the site operable through annual infusions of $2,000 or $3,000.
