YMCA skateboard-park plan focus is back on bark park

Barbara Diamond

After getting the runaround for years, South Coast YMCA is ready to

roll out a plan for a skateboard park carved out of the Dog Park in

Laguna Canyon.

The plan proposes a 35,000-square-foot park -- absorbing about

one-third of the pups’ playground -- adjacent to the fenced-off

Verizon property. It includes a half-pipe, two quarter-pipes, a snake

run, a shallow pool, a free-style area, a 1,200 square-foot facility

where youngsters can gather, public parking for at least 14 vehicles,

and a bus stop.

YMCA officials said the plan will be submitted to the Design

Review Board, preferably before summer vacation begins, in order to

get input from skateboarders.

Unlike some skateboard parks, which are freewheeling, the Laguna

Park will be a supervised facility, and will be session-based, with

age-specific times of operation.

Negotiations are underway to use the bridge to the Verizon

property for entry and exit to the park. “Verizon’s bridge is crucial

to the park’s success,” said Dan Shapero, chair of the branch’s

Skateboard Park Task Force.

The bridge will save considerable construction money, but more

importantly, it may blunt public opposition to the site, if

skateboarders do not use the Bark Park bridge -- the only access to

the site across Laguna Creek at this time.

“We have sent a letter to Verizon with a formal proposal and the

updated site plan,” Shapero said.

The plan is not set in concrete.

“We still have a long way to go,” Shapero said. “But I do feel we

are on a road to getting the park on the ground. We are actually

talking to planners about a concept review to get public input and an

application for a conditional-use permit has been submitted.”

The plan is an updated version of the proposal drawn up for Big

Bend, the third site to which the council has shuffled the park over

the past four and a half years.

Originally, the YMCA drew up plans that would have used the back

of the Act V property, which the City Council selected as the site to

lease to the YMCA for a skateboard park at a Sept. 19, 2000

meeting.Two months later, staff was directed to develop an agreement,

but the possibility of other sites was discussed.

When the council reneged on the Act V site, then-Mayor Paul

Freeman suggested that YMCA officials take a look at the Bark Park.

YMCA officials were shocked but felt they had no choice but to go

along with the suggestion and a written agreement was completed.

Howls of protest by dog owners prompted the council to suggest Big

Bend as an alternate site and new plans were drawn.

Big Bend fell by the wayside in 2004 when the city acquired

property above it that connected hiking and migratory trails, not

conducive to the operation of a skateboard park.

Mayor Pro Tem Steven Dicterow recommended that YMCA go back to the

Bark Park, the only site for which they had a written commitment from

the city, in spite of the previous opposition.

“Besides, after soils, traffic -- particularly traffic,

topographic and biological studies of the Big Bend site, the task

force felt the Bark Park site was the better location,” Shapero said.

A fence and sound-buffering landscaping will be constructed

between the skaters and the dogs.

Returning to the Bark Park site also meant the YMCA did not have

to take on local environmentalists, no small consideration, Shapero

said.

Every site suggested for the skateboard park has been opposed.

Canyon sites were said to be too far from town, on too dangerous a

road and hazardous for skateboarders to get into or out of.

“Nobody wants it in their neighborhood -- and every place in

Laguna is a neighborhood,” said Dicterow, a long-time supporter of a

skateboard park.

Dicterow, who was honored Monday night by the YMCA branch for his

support of youth programs in Laguna Beach -- and specifically the

skateboard park -- said he was frustrated by the pace of the project.

“We have been working on this for a very long time,” said Laguna

Beach attorney Larry Nokes, YMCA spokesman for the park since it was

first proposed. “Demographics show the city has as many kids as

people over 55.”

Officials of South Coast YMCA, which began in Laguna Beach, said

their goal is not just to build a skateboard park, which they have

successfully constructed in several communities, but to increase the

presence of YMCA in Laguna with programs for young people.