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.