Council considers new site for skating
Mike Swanson
The site for a skateboard park in Laguna Beach looks to be on the
move yet again. This time, the proposal is for Big Bend, one of the
latest, and oldest, suggested locations for the park.
Despite the City Council’s approving use of a portion of Laguna
Beach’s bark park for the city’s skaters on Oct. 2, 2001, the debate
for the perfect site lingers. Councilman Steve Dicterow grudgingly
recommended the move on Tuesday.
“I still don’t think moving it to Big Bend is the right place, but
it’s better than [the bark park],” he said.
Larry Nokes, chairman of the South Orange County YMCA, expressed
concern that the plan could stunt an already drawn out process.
“We have a contract now with the city for the bark park,” Nokes
said. “We are not interested in stepping backward. We just can’t
afford to do that.”
Nokes did say that he was willing to work with the city to change
sites if it needed the bark park for some other use, and added that a
move to Big Bend would require lights.
Big Bend was recommended as a home to the new skate park nearly
three years ago. The introduction to a motion to approve the park at
ACT V in the City Council’s Sept. 19, 2000, meeting cites the reason
for Big Bend’s dismissal at its Aug. 15, 2000, meeting. It states
that the council had been concerned about safe exit and entrance
areas at that location, and the item was continued so that other
options could be explored.
After the exploration of a handful of other sites, Big Bend, on
Laguna Canyon Road, is evidently back to the front of the line
pending a Caltrans study.
Dicterow said he preferred a location in a neighborhood, where it
could remain out of public view, thus more available to locals than
outsiders. South Laguna resident Ann Christoph took that further by
suggesting a few small skate parks be built in neighborhoods rather
than one major park in an area conflicted by traffic -- of either a
vehicular or canine variety.
“It gives an opportunity for the kids to have a place to skate,
but it’s not so fabulous that it’s going to be for the professional
skater,” she said.
Laguna Beach resident Dan Shapero, father of 9- and 10-year-old
boys, said he’d love to have existing parks in the city made more
skater-friendly because kids skate in them anyway, but not as an
alternative to a supervised skate park.
The YMCA, after getting approval in October 2001, waited until
August, 2002, to ask for money, which was $10,000 of a $75,000
allocation. The $10,000 would pay for the preliminary design of the
skate park at the bark park site.
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