Skateboard Park Still a Pipedream

The idea of an in-town skateboard park has gone from a promise made 25 years ago to what supporters today say may be a pipedream.

Three possible sites are the focus of a study this summer by a city recreation subcommittee: the electrical plant across from the Sawdust Festival on Laguna Canyon Road, Aliso Beach Park across from Aliso Beach on South Coast Highway and Lang Park on Wesley Drive near the Montage Resort in South Laguna. The subcommittee will report its findings to the recreation committee in September and make a recommendation to the City Council by December, said Ben Siegel, the city’s director of community services and liaison for the committee.

“It began with the promise,” said Jim Howard, a member of the study group. “We promised 25 years ago that we were going to make a commitment to the kids that we would create a skateboard park. It was a big deal. And, literally, we have been struggling ever since. Now, the delivery of that promise has become the impossible dream. That’s just the reality of it.”

In a town where skateboarding is as iconic and indigenous as surfing, skateboarders can no longer ride the asphalt hills like waves and are subject to the same rules of the road as bicyclists. In 2012, the city clamped down by banning them from some of the steepest inclines, reacting to a petition from residents voicing concern about close-encounters with high-speed downhill skateboarders.

That same year, Steve Dicterow campaigned to return to the City Council with a promise to finally build a skateboard park, a pledge supported by council member Kelly Boyd. Potential sites then were in hilltop parks. But putting a skate park in a neighborhood did not pan out, with Arch Beach Heights neighbors near Moulton Meadows Park objecting in force in 2013 to potential elevated noise and high-speed downhill skateboarding on streets near the park.

“The number one problem is noise,” said Howard. “The second reason is the fear of juvenile delinquents and gangs and bringing in bad influence and all that kind of stuff. There are neighbors who don’t like kids, that’s okay, that’s not un-American. Their kids are probably grown and gone.”

A study on an estuary stymied the potential of skateboard trucks and wheels at Aliso Beach Park, recently considered the best site in town for a skate park, subcommittee members reported earlier.

“The subcommittee recognizes the many challenges associated with that site,” said Siegel. “If there was an easy location, it would have been identified already. I think this one’s going to be challenging for them to solve.” One challenge, he said, would be acquiring California Coastal Commission permits.

Estuaries are the highest-value land habitats along the West Coast, said local resident Mike Beanan, an environmental advocate who said he’s been working on restoring the Aliso Creek wetlands for 40 years. “Ninety percent of them are gone in California. And we have one. So the campaign is ‘bring the lagoon back to Laguna.’”

Howard, along with subcommittee chair Michele Hall, still prefers Aliso Beach Park. He cited an existing parking lot to safely maneuver dropping off and picking up kids, restrooms, a highway underpass to the beach and the buffering noise of Coast Highway traffic and crashing ocean waves.

Hall, however, said she’d bow to the estuary. “Environment comes first,” she said. “I’m never going to push for something that’s going to do anything that’s detrimental to any kind of conservation effort.”

The main problem is not noise, said Hall. “I’m hoping to try and change people’s attitude toward skateboarders,” she said. “This is a park. We’re not building someplace where kids are going to hang out and commit crimes.” Putting a skateboard park on top of a future parking structure at the ACT V lot in Laguna Canyon may also be a possibility, she said, if and when that happens. “There’s no neighborhood back there,” she said. “And the trolleys stop out there. I keep saying we’re going to have to pick the best of a bad situation.”

A $300,000 grant was recently awarded to Laguna Ocean Foundation from the California Coastal Conservancy to study the lagoon at the ocean-end of Aliso Creek as a state-designated protected estuary. Beanan and several other local estuary advocates went before the California Coastal Commission in June at its meeting in Newport Beach to go on record supporting lagoon restoration. The Aliso Creek lagoon is identified as critical recovery habitat for the endangered tidewater goby fish and as a place to reintroduce the small ocean fish, said Janice Mackey from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Department. The goby is an indicator species of a healthy estuary, according to reports.

“If you’ve got goby, then you have habitat for southern steelhead trout and other fish and it’s safe enough for people to play in because the fish are alive,” said Beanan. “That particular site, unknown to the good people of the city of Laguna Beach for some reason, even though it’s in their open space element, is listed as an estuary.” Beanan added that a healthy estuary also means a healthier ocean for people to enjoy.

In a 2006 California Coastal Commission report, Aliso Creek is also listed as an “impaired body of water” flowing into a Marine Protected Area. “Residential and commercial use of fertilizers and pesticides, and pet and waterfowl waste, are most likely the primary contributors to the nutrient and potential storm water toxic impacts and elevated bacteria load,” the report stated.

Howard, however, questions the seriousness of the estuary designation and the lagoon’s importance. “We can talk in depth about the impossible dream, whether it’s because the people who want the toxic pool of water, which is what they call it, to interfere with a park that won’t have any effect on it.”

Meanwhile, other skateboard parks have popped up in nearby cities and opponents of a local skateboard park recommend that local kids go there. “A lot of these kids are under 16 and don’t drive,” said Hall. “That’s another reason why I like Aliso Park; there’s a bus stop right there and they can take the trolley.”