Meeting the need: successful skatepark designs start with knowing what users will want down the line.

What makes a terrible skatepark?

This improbable question may be the best first question for a local planner to ask. The world of skatepark design can be a contentious and confusing one, and it may be best to know first what to avoid.

It's nearly always the case that the city officials and community leaders charged with the responsibility of managing a skatepark project will know little or nothing about skateparks; in fact, the inner truth of skatepark wisdom will always elude the outsider. A park that ultimately fails to meet the needs of the community will invariably be one that's designed and built by well-intentioned non-skaters. While grassroots organizing and fundraising by local youth, involved parents, local businesses and developers provide the heart and soul of a healthy skatepark, the best way to ensure your success is to involve weathered, mature, seasoned skaters in the design and construction of your project from beginning to end.

Community involvement will provide the assurance that your park will be a valued resource--one that's wished for, dreamed of, worked for and cared for--but it's not necessarily the best source for design ideas. There are two essential elements for a great skatepark that are largely unknowable even to local skating youth: How will the park be used, and what will they want in the future?

After all, the proficiency of local skaters will skyrocket if they're given a park that can accommodate their growth in skill. Skaters who have only had access to parking lots, plazas and city streets can't necessarily envision what will satisfy their nearly limitless potential for skill development. According to Tom Miller, of Skaters for Portland Skateparks, "a cost-effective, long-lasting facility that keeps locals excited about their skatepark for years to come requires design oversight from experts." Miller adds, "Youth input is essential, but ultimately, wisdom and foresight earned through decades of skateboarding experience is needed."

Young skaters also can't anticipate the complexities of multiple users of multiple skill levels, and the potential lines and flow of a skatepark. Understanding those skating nuances is essential to produce a safe, stimulating, satisfying park. Seasoned skaters with decades on their boards on all environments have the necessary expertise, and can help park planners avoid the design mistakes that will result in a facility that ultimately disappoints its users and the community. Making sure that skating pros are involved throughout the design and building process is the surest key to a successful park design.

How Big? How Many?

Many communities have suffered from underestimating the demand for skateparks. Unlike most other types of neighborhood park facilities, such as playing fields and tennis courts, a well-designed skatepark will attract skaters throughout the region and beyond, both as a result of great design and a largely unmet demand for adequate facilities. Successful skateparks earn a reputation that skaters will routinely travel distances to use. Steve Rose, of Purkiss-Rose, Landscape Architecture, Recreation and Park Planning, recommends that communities plan based on population and anticipate a need for a system of skateparks of adequate size, each serving roughly areas of 30,000 to 40,000 people. Municipal authorities and park planners are well-advised to think in terms of meeting regional needs with a comprehensive plan.

Most professional park planners recommend that an in-ground concrete skatepark be a minimum of 10,000 to 15,000 square feet. While this is a good rule of thumb, park size can be misleading. Tiny parks such as Donald, Ore.'s 2,500-square-foot facility, designed by Dreamland Skateparks, draws skaters from all over the world; meanwhile, enormous facilities, such as the 91,000-square-foot park in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, can fall short of expectations. Size largely comes down to design. A successful design can be achieved even with a limited budget that's too small for a large park.

Who Will Use Your Skatepark?

It may be challenging, but not impossible, for a well-designed skatepark to satisfy skateboarders, inline skaters and BMX bikers. It's best to decide in advance who will use the park. If the skatepark will accommodate BMX bikes, the design, construction and management plans must anticipate their use. BMX bikes are built with steel pegs on the axles to perform the tricks that characterize BMX-style riding. Skateboarders grind on aluminum axles. Skatepark coping will wear down the skateboard truck, but BMX pegs will damage ordinary concrete and coping surfaces in most skateparks.

Construction of the park should allow for the extra wear and tear these steel pegs create, and this will necessarily increase the costs of building the park. Kent Dahlgren, of Dreamland Skateparks, believes the best results can be achieved by building with BMX use in mind, and then posting scheduling plans to prevent the commingling of bikes with other users during peak hours for safety. This type of planning can create parks that are more inclusive and less divisive for communities whose resources are limited.

Various skill levels within the skating community can also be accommodated by design. It's important to realize, in general, that skateparks aren't built for rank beginners. Rather, novice skaters hone their basic skills in driveways, playgrounds and empty parking lots, where they can develop without the risk of other skaters; they usually take on skateparks only once they're confident on their boards. Within a park, skaters will sort themselves according to the challenges the skatepark presents. Good design results from an intimate understanding of the potential movement created by the shape of the park, and will anticipate how skaters of a variety of skill levels will use the park.

In-ground or Modular?

Park planners faced with budget constraints may hope to satisfy their need for a skatepark with modular, above-ground facilities, but several important issues should be addressed before tight budgets are used for modular facilities.

Although modular, prefab units may seem like a perfect solution to city officials--satisfy the kids and save the budget for other needs--modular equipment doesn't come cheap. Costs can mount rapidly--a site must be purchased or donated, often a concrete surface must be poured, and maintenance costs for equipment that can deteriorate quickly from use and weathering can drive a city's costs up even further over the long run. Factor in the prospect of long-term boredom, and the useful life of prefab parks can be low. According to Steve Rose, kids watch the X-Games and see competitions on modular units and think they would be cool to have, but "once they skate it, they're bored and back on the street where they started."

Along with most designers, he thinks the best choice is a concrete in-ground facility in which a far greater variety of skating challenges can be included. It may be better to think in terms of modular equipment serving as a temporary option while more permanent facilities are in the planning process. Modular equipment may also serve to demonstrate to corporate donors and local business people the potential interest a facility will generate.

Skating Styles

At the risk of oversimplification, let's say that skateboarders can skate in roughly three styles. Street-style skating includes the types of obstacles generally encountered in an urban setting, such as stairs, rails, tables, benches and planters. Small communities may plan a skatepark in response to complaints of business people on downtown streets plagued by local kids on skateboards. In Keizer, Ore., Steve and Charlane Carlson chose to organize their small community and give the kids a place to skate rather than pursue punitive alternatives such as ticketing and arrests. With donated money, supplies, expertise and labor, the Carlsons built a 21,600-square-foot street course and reduced complaints to the local police from 15 or more a week to essentially zero. (See "From Sidewalks to Skateparks" on p. 12.)

Stand-alone elements such as half-pipes produce skating styles that are basically a two-dimensional back-and-forth motion. Transition-style skating evolved from the use of empty swimming pools. Skaters learn to increase momentum with pumping through transitions, and then skate the "lines" the design produces. A well-designed transition-style park flows with lines. As skaters increase their proficiency, the back-and-forth motion learned in a half-pipe can evolve into the more sophisticated transition experience in a facility designed for transition skating.

Many skateparks have attempted to be all things to all skaters, resulting in facilities that may fall short of expectations. Blending transition skating with street-course elements can result in what Tom Miller calls "a crash-up derby." Street elements must be incorporated into designs in a way that honors flow within the park. In addition, the design must respect the notion that street elements are largely intended for performing tricks that require much trial and error to accomplish. Error within the paths of other skaters inevitably results in reduced safety for everyone using the facility. Street and transition skating must be accommodated with careful, expert planning.

Designing For Safety

The experience of most successful community skateparks suggests that safe skateparks are largely the result of effective design. Supervision, safety equipment requirements and rules are no match for design that effectively anticipates the actual use of the skatepark by skaters. Design flaws that cause crossed paths and dead ends or that result in freeway-like pile-ups are the most serious cause of safety problems. Again, involving mature, experienced skaters in design and construction is key.

Steve Rose knows from experience that it's invaluable to have a skater on the construction team. Sometimes flaws that may not be evident in a design become glaringly clear during construction, and an educated eye can spot trouble and make the necessary adjustments. "An inexperienced builder," Rose says, "won't have a clue," even if he's an expert concrete contractor. The eye of a skater is the intangible element that can prevent the design flaws that ultimately reduce safety and the satisfaction of the skate community. Dreamland Skateparks has built a reputation for pioneering skateparks that work, designing for flow and building for a kink-less skating experience with a team of design/builders consisting only of seasoned skaters.

Park Stewardship

One of the great benefits of a well-designed park is the ownership it can inspire among local skaters. Kent Dahlgren suggests building stewardship into the park.

"We find a kid who's a natural leader in the community, and we have him work on the team," he says. "That creates stewardship." The pride of ownership also develops out of the design itself. Tom Miller says, "It's not just, 'This is your skatepark. Care for it!' It's giving skaters something so cool they want to care for it." A well-designed skatepark will produce a cadre of built-in supervisors among the kids who love their park. Rod Wojtanik of Portland (Ore.) Parks and Recreation is a landscape architect in charge of Portland's skatepark development. He points out the additional benefit that "parents have come to realize the importance of skating and skateparks in the lives of their children, promoting healthy, active, physical and social lifestyles." Skateparks have proven themselves to be enormous assets in a healthy community, prized by all.

Skateparks as Community Centers

Ultimately, skateparks are outdoor youth centers. Some communities are beginning to design skateparks to serve youth in a variety of ways. Trends that produced skateparks in industrial settings and out-of-the-way locations have given way to building parks in downtown, centrally located, highly visible sites. These parks give skaters the respect and attention they deserve, reduce vandalism and vagrancy, and nearly eliminate graffiti problems.

Skateparks can be built within existing parks, adjacent to community centers or centrally located in areas that encourage friends and spectators to hang out. While blending a variety of uses must obviously bow to safety issues, design can successfully accommodate additional community objectives. Giving kids a place to meet, eat and hang out benefits the whole community. Many communities have recognized that skateparks can provide the focal point for such community youth centers.

Jodi Mariano, now of the Chicago-area landscape architecture firm Teska Associates, designed a plan within an existing 80-acre park facility that includes ball fields, tennis courts, a sled hill, a playground, conservation areas, trails, park offices and a town hall. The local junior high and high schools border the area, along with a regional trail system. Recognizing that skateboarders often use their skateboards for transportation, she planned a linear trail for skaters, with ramps and other obstacles, that leads to the high school. A skating plaza was planned adjacent to a new youth center, and another linear park was designed to incorporate larger vert-style skating elements. Her design was intended to integrate skaters into the larger recreation area and encourage broader social interactions, for the community as a whole.

It may be that one of the best solutions to the challenge of designing and building a great skatepark is to form a partnership between the two groups that sometimes compete for contracts. Park planners often have several objectives to satisfy simultaneously when building a skatepark. There are landscape and site issues encompassing broader park design needs, and Kent Dahlgren suggests that partnerships between skatepark teams and landscape architects may solve these multiple design problems. According to Rod Wojtanik, "A grand plan that incorporates future park needs in phases, allowing for spectator areas, shaded areas, restrooms, trash and recycling facilities, etc. to be built in stages," reflects the potential scale and popularity of the sport. A partnership between a landscape architect and an experienced skatepark design/build group allows each team to do what they do best.

Delving into Design

These Web sites are good starting points for learning about issues in skatepark design.

www.dreamlandskateparks.com

www.pdxskaters.org

www.purkiss-rose-rsi.com

www.teskaassociates.com

www.sleestak.net

www.concretedisciples.com

Carol Newman is a freelance writer living in Washington, D.C. She was the former editor of Running & FitNews for the American Running Association. She can be reached at [e-mail].