Laguna Beach parents have been fighting for a skatepark in town for so long that the kids of early advocates are now adults. Initiatives and petitions have flared up and died down, and now Laguna Beach Republicans have taken up the torch.
Fletcher Berryman, the newly elected president of Laguna Beach Republicans and a longtime skatepark proponent, called a meeting of skatepark supporters for 9 a.m. Saturday, March 28, at the Boys & Girls Club, 1085 Laguna Canyon Road.
“We need to learn a new set of political skills as a community, so we can find local issues that bring people together and give local political party members a positive mission instead of constant rivalry even when it is non-productive,” said Berryman, in a statement describing the LBGOP’s goals. And one of their first initiatives is to make a skatepark part of Laguna’s public recreation program.
“We want to show our neighbors that coalitions empower people at the local level, give us more control of things that matter, and produce success instead of grid lock,” said Berryman.
He has an ally in the new chair of the Parks and Recreation skatepark subcommittee, Michele Hall, who will give an update on city planning and resources available for such a project at the March 28 meeting. Hall is a former president of Laguna Beach Republicans and creating a local skatepark was part of her campaign platform when she ran for City Council last November. “Skate boarding is here to stay as a youth sport in our town,” said Hall in a statement. “We need to mainstream this sport and create a safe place for young skaters to have a sense of community.”
The biggest issue facing skatepark proponents to date has been location.
In June 2005, Laguna dog park patrons successfully defeated a proposal to put a skatepark in the canyon that would take part of the dog park, as well as the adjacent property now occupied by the homeless shelter.
Seven years later, then Council member Steve Dicterow and then Mayor Kelly Boyd began investigating a skatepark in Moulton Meadows Park in Arch Beach Heights. But neighborhood residents, invited to a preliminary meeting in May 2013 put the kibosh on that. Opponents to the project feared traffic congestion, more heart-stopping driving encounters with downhill skateboarders on local streets and a rise in police activity.
At a Parks and Recreation Committee meeting later that year, Director of Community Services Ben Siegel acknowledged the possibility of building a skate park in a parking lot opposite Aliso Beach Park in South Laguna. But challenges remained, such as determining ownership and feasibility, Siegel noted.
After calling the skatepark a priority for the Parks and Recreation Committee, longtime member Alan Dolby, in his interview for reappointment last month, offered his opinion that the only viable spot would be that property across from Aliso Beach, despite a caution that “it would require a lot of work.”
