Pay to play: staff supervision or self-governance: what should your skatepark policy be?

One of the serious questions that skatepark planners have to answer is how the facility will be managed after it is built. There is no set answer, because there are almost as many models of facility management as there are political ideologies. Skateparks can be successful under a variety of management models, but mature skaters are finding that partnering with their local park departments and fostering stewardship and ownership among the users of the parks, help them achieve their long-term goals of better skateparks.

Open access, unsupervised skateparks can be successful if they are sited properly designed with long-term challenges, built to a high standard, and constructed of permanent, durable, low-maintenance materials. Stewardship and ownership by the users of a skatepark can build a skatepark "culture" that minimizes the need for paid supervisors and maintenance workers.

Portland's volunteer-driven Burnside skatepark in Oregon was a labor of love for a group of dedicated skaters in the early 1990s, who used a combination of guerilla construction and community outreach to get their park built. The momentum of their work was such that Portland eventually granted the park a conditional permit to continue its existence on city land.

Kent Dahlgren, a skatepark devotee and volunteer who spent evenings and weekends helping to build Burnside, says skater-designed and built skateparks are a lot like community gardens, which can "engender grass-roots stewardship of previously crappy areas." Today the skaters still clean, repair and improve the park, in a formerly blighted community underneath a bridge in a lot that was a wasteland of used syringes, trash and human waste.

Other Burnside graduates have formed some of the most highly regarded design/build teams in the now-frantic world of skatepark construction. Airspeed, Dreamland, Grindline and Placed to Ride Skateparks are so busy to meet the public's demand, they start their next project as soon as they have finished their last.

Concrete Curriculum

Rod Wojtanik, a landscape architect and project manager, is working with Portland, Ore., skaters to establish a system of skateparks that attract skaters from a neighborhood to a regional level. This dynamic approach is important in building a culture among skateboarders. He says he would hate to have a city think it has met skaters' needs by dropping a few ramps on a tennis court.

"They don't give their baseball players an old pasture with paper plates for bases and a piece of plywood for a backstop, do they?" he asks. Creating parks with smaller obstacles for children is admirable, but the kids need to be exposed to increasing challenges if they are to grow in their abilities. Challenging terrain also attracts accomplished skaters and older skaters, who can either actively mentor the neophytes, or passively teach by demonstrating their mastery.

Dahlgren calls the increasing challenges of a well-designed park a "concrete curriculum," a skateboarding lesson plan encoded in concrete. He says many skatepark committees make the mistake of "allowing the students to design their own curriculum." This leads to "mediocre, bland parks that fail to drive or push progression," he says.

In contrast, the designers who "studied" at Burnside are able to "mix the community's inclinations and tendencies with observations of what they are actually doing, for later considerations of where their progression may be going," Dahlgren explains. What the skaters get is a design specific to that community, one that will be applicable for a long period of time.

Many northwest parks are unsupervised with open access, attracting a level of professional and accomplished skaters who will travel long distances to skate an original design. Having a steady stream of mentors can give the local skaters a huge boost of pride in their park.

Skaters for Portland Skateparks' cofounder Tom Miller thinks skateparks should be sited in the most visible locations in a community. "This creates efficient, de facto supervision without cost," he says. Because teens sometimes can be prone to undesirable behavior, it's best to be sure they are attracted to areas with inherent supervision. Miller says well-designed and built skateparks that provide terrain for all types and ability levels of skaters are less likely to attract adverse behavior.

"Good design and construction encourages an emphasis on skateboarding as opposed to other activities," Miller stresses. "It also attracts the older generation of skater, 25 years of age and up, who is more likely to be seen as an authority figure by teens and other youth, and less tolerant of undesirable behavior," he says.

Work to Skate

Early in 2003, the city of Tacoma, Wash., began discussions for a skateboarding ban in the downtown area. The city had been enjoying significant growth in that area with a campus construction for the University of Washington, the Museum of Glass and the new Tacoma Art Museum. These were just a few of the new buildings that featured attractive street skating obstacles with marble and granite benches, smooth stairs and open plazas. Tacoma officials needed a solution to this emerging problem and a skateboarding ban seemed to meet their needs. The ban has since been postponed until a more reasonable solution can be developed, but it was enough to help form the Tacoma skateboarding advocacy group now known as TacomaXskatepark (TXS). Peter Whitley, a TXS park steward, says the group has 10 active members primarily working toward creating a new skatepark that will meet the needs of Tacoma area skateboarders.

An important part of TXS's effort to create a new skatepark is demonstrating a willingness to take ownership of Tacoma's two older skateparks. One, built in the mid-1990s, has concrete and steel structures on a 6,000-square-foot slab; the other', built in 2002, has wooden ramps on an 8,000-square-foot slab. The group realized that merely pointing out problems with the modular parks and asking for a well-built concrete park was not getting results with the city. So, the group decided to improve skaters' relationship with the park department.

Whitley said both skateparks have serious maintenance problems, but parks employees did not know why the destruction was happening. "The first thing we did was contact the park department just to have a friendly conversation and talk about the possibilities," Whitley explains. "To our surprise, that initial meeting was attended by a dozen parks employees. The questions they asked were surprising and revealed some interesting shortcomings in their awareness about how skaters were using the parks."

Whitley says the parks employees asked questions such as:

"Why do the skaters take out this section of the fence?"

"What would keep skaters from continually bringing in sheets of plywood?"

"Why is the wood so chipped away in these spots?"

TXS members were a bit surprised at first, but quickly realized that the parks department needed the older skaters' experience. TXS members made a thorough photo record of the parks. Using their photographs, they presented a maintenance plan starting with the tasks they would be willing to perform, and recommendations for substantial refurbishments.

"Most of our stewardship is cosmetic in nature," says Whitley. The stewards have cans of anti-vandal spray and rags to clean up the most offensive graffiti, brooms and dustpans to clear debris, and squeegees to remove standing water. "Our primary mission is to show the skaters at these parks that it's up to all of us to keep the parks in good shape," Whitley emphasizes. "The coolest part about the program in sweeping up the park, which everyone is grateful for, then grabbing a board and enjoying it," he says, adding that the skaters have more appreciation for dirty work if they see another skater doing it, rather than someone driving a parks truck,. "In fact, the parks department asked me if I wanted to wear an orange vest."

Starting the program was easy, Whitley says. Insurance waivers were required for the stewards, and they supplied a schedule and list of maintenance recommendations. "It's been pretty easy working with the parks department and we recently coordinated with them to rent a pressure-washer to clean out the gunk under and around the ramps. The lion's share of the work we do is just stopping by the parks once a week, picking up, and looking for any significant damage," he says.

Open Access vs. Controlled Access

Implementing volunteer stewards is one way to achieve balance in a skatepark. But there are park and recreation departments who choose to have supervised staff on the premises. Lee Greene, Chattanooga Parks and Recreation's Manager of Projects and Facilities, says he wouldn't have built his modular skatepark any other way. "I can't see having a park that's open to the public without supervision. That would be like having a swimming pool without lifeguards. What if a kid were injured, lying on the concrete and there was nobody there to help?"

This is a fear shared by some parks professionals, but it may be unfounded. According to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission's National Electronic Injury Surveillance System, skaters are no more prone to injury than the kids at the basketball court or soccer field. Add to that the fact that skateparks are popular recreation facilities with consistent crowds of skaters, many of whom have cellular phones; it is highly unlikely that an injured child will be helpless and alone.

John Bracken argues against supervised parks. The audio engineer from Winchester, Va., whose hobby includes skateboarding seeks out new terrain during his work travels, and plans his vacations to include trips to some of the finer "round wall concrete" in the nation. He says he spends at least three or four hours a day working for two skatepark committees in Winchester and nearby Front Royal, Va. Bracken says he is a fan of parks that are "flee, concrete and open all the time." "But lots of the non-skaters think we need to fence off the parks and have all attendant enforcing the pad rules and collecting money from out-of-town skaters," he says. "If a town is asking for donations for a public skateparlk, lint they want to charge a fee ... who is going to pay for the attendant?"

A "pay-to-play" management scheme might fund the attendant, Bracken says, but he argues that staffing the park with all attendant is "creating a job that is not needed." He also feels that staffing a park increases the risk the community must accept for a "use at your own risk" park.

In Chattanooga's skatepark, for example, the staff members and many of the more experienced skaters ride without helmets, though the park's rules require them.

Bracken contends that gating makes the skateparks inaccessible to skaters who are not free on the weekends or evenings. Those skaters are forced back to the streets to get their fix. "We've got guys who are in their 20s and work swing shifts, They get off work and want to go blow off steam with a session. So, if they get off at nine, where are they going to go? They head downtown to skate."

A public recreation facility should be free of charge and minimally supervised, Bracken argues, "How much does it cost to play tennis or basketball or Frisbee golf in your town?" lie asks. "Nothing, I bet. So why do you want to create a job just to charge skaters to use their park?" The standard argument is to have an adult present in case of an accident.

Bracken says the rules that apply to the local BMX track should apply to a skatepark as well, "It is open without supervision every day. It even has a sign posted saying 'use at your own risk. pads are recommended.' That's all you need. Most states now have a limited liability law, which makes all facilities operated by parks mid recreation departments 'use at your own risk.'"

Peter Whitley, the TXS steward, says Tacoma's parks department has helped his group in their larger mission to get a new skatepark built, by acknowledging their commitment at public meetings and asking for recommendations concerning skateboarding matters. For example, the fence around one of the skateparks was in poor shape, so TXS suggested that it be repaired or removed. "Now the fence is gone, the park looks much better, and the skaters have a more pleasant place to do their thing," Whitley concludes.

Because of the skateboarders assumed stewardship, two decrepit and ignored skateparks were revitalized without the need for staff supervision. As s result, the parks department has inadvertently extended its staff numbers. They might not get paid for their work, but their efforts have not gone unnoticed, and have helped bridge a gap between park staff and their citizens.