City skate park plans move up

Lolita Harper

Preliminary actions taken toward a skate park at Davis Elementary

this week could mean area skaters will have something more to grind

in the near future than their teeth.

Parks and Recreation commissioners endorsed a recreation master

plan that lists a skate park as the No. 1 recreational need in the

city. They created a Skateboard Park Planning Team to conduct more

research.

The leader of the Skateboard Coalition, Jim Gray, who has lobbied

hard to get a park built, said the step was encouraging.

With the city’s own data proving an overriding need for a

skateboard facility, Gray said it is only a matter of time before one

is built.

“There is so much ... skateboarding in the master plan, it’s going

to be hard to sweep us under the rug anymore,” Gray said.

Gray, a former professional skateboarder who manufactures boards,

offered commissioners his expertise and connections to ensure that

designs for a park are first-rate.

Although he is burned out from 10 years of unfulfilled promises of

a skate park, Gray said he thinks this effort is genuine and

encouraged his youthful political partners to keep up the fight.

“We’ve got to keep the kids happy, because it’s going to be a

couple years, and they might start losing hope,” Gray said.

Playing fields for children and adults, tot lots, playgrounds and

tennis courts are also issues that Costa Mesa residents feel strongly

about, according to the preliminary recreation master plan released

in October.

RJM Design Group Inc., based in San Juan Capistrano, released its

breakdown of the various recreation needs in Costa Mesa compiled from

hours of residents’ input, telephone surveys, interviews and analysis

of recreation trends, demands and current facilities.

Stacia Mancini, the city’s recreation manager, who received the

employee of the month award in part for her work on the plan, said

the turnout was more than double the average in other cities, with

about 80 persons at each session.

Gray was in large part responsible for that turnout. Gray

motivated all his fellow skaters -- young and old -- and parents of

skaters to attend the workshops to demonstrate the need for a

skateboarding facility.

Gray said he wanted to make sure city officials could no longer

ignore the need for a skate park in town.

Even beyond the input from the skateboarders at the meetings,

Mancini said outside research, including a telephone survey, also

showed that a skate park was the No. 1 recreation need in Costa Mesa.

* LOLITA HARPER covers Costa Mesa. She may be reached at (949)

574-4275 or by e-mail at lolita.harper@latimes.com.