Skate park project dies

Jennifer Kho

COSTA MESA -- To applause and groans, a divided City Council voted 3

to 2 late Monday to kill plans to build a skateboard park at Charle and

Hamilton streets.

Only Mayor Libby Cowan and Councilwoman Linda Dixon voted to save the

plans, which had been approved by the previous City Council, of which

both women were members.

“I’m disappointed that we’re letting the youth in this community down

again and without another solution,” Dixon said.

The vote came a month after the current council deadlocked on the

park’s fate, with Councilwoman Karen Robinson and Councilman Chris Steel

trying to kill the site and Cowan and Dixon set against them.

Councilman Gary Monahan, who was absent from the January meeting,

broke the tie Monday with his vote to drop the site plans, which were

approved in October.

“I personally believe the site was chosen because that was all that

was left,” Monahan said. “We’re paying way too much money for this

location. We could build two or three skateboard parks for that much

money. Our kids deserve better. They deserve a state-of-the-art site with

parking, bathrooms, where they don’t have to cross streets.”

City officials and residents have debated about the location of the

park for more than two years. The city has been interested in building a

park for 10 years and began looking at locations in 1998, when state law

changed to protect cities from skateboard liability.

Council members approved a site last year at Lions Park but changed

their minds after neighbors pointed out potential flooding and traffic

problems, as well as diminishing green space at the site.

Designs for the Charle and Hamilton park were in the final stages

Monday, with the city less than a month away from putting the project up

for bid.

Monahan said Tuesday he believes the demand for a “quality skateboard

park” should be met in a regional park rather than a city park.

Reactions, as they have been throughout the debate, were decidedly

mixed on the council’s action.

“This is a terrible location to put a skateboard park,” said Greg

Cocroft, who lives near the site at Charle and Hamilton streets.

Cocroft said he thinks the skateboard park belongs within an already

existing park.

And Rick Rodgers, a Costa Mesa resident who ran for a City Council

position in November, said he thinks the majority of the city doesn’t

want a skateboard park at all.

But others, including skateboarders who have been waiting for years

for a park to be built, mourned the site’s passing.

“Skateboarding is now part of youth culture,” resident Jim Gray said.

“Kids live for this. Except for Dixon and Cowan, [the City Council]

doesn’t really seem to get that.”

As a consolation, Cowan asked that the city develop some kind of

skateboarding opportunity for children this summer, using some of the

money that was expected to be spent on the Charle and Hamilton streets

site.

Resident Chuck Hults said that’s not enough.

“It’s just putting more money into something that could have already

been permanent,” he said. “I’m almost at the point where I’ve given up. I

don’t know what to do anymore. What about all our time that we’ve put

into this? [The City Council members] are just buckling under pressure

the way they buckled under pressure with Lions Park.”

More hot debate greets Costa Mesa’s new commissioners. See Page 3.