Dude, Where's Our Skate Park?

There’s a saying among skaters: if your city doesn’t have a skate park, then your city is a skate park.

And progressive cities across the country have been getting the clue. Over the last decade or so, communities like Seattle, Denver, Chicago, and even Helena, Montana have rethought their park amenities, adding popular features like off-leash dog runs and skateboard parks to the mix.

Unfortunately, Ann Arbor, for all its self-professed progressiveness, has been a bit late to the game, often dragging its heels on projects like these. A spirited and eclectic group of locals, however, is determined to drag the city into the new Millenium, embracing an ambitious plan to build a state-of-the-art skate park on Tree Town's west side.

On deck

Dug Song wants to raise his 3-year-old son in a town with a real, legitimate skate park. The 33-year-old vice president of engineering at high-tech start-up company Zattoo  has been skateboarding the streets of Ann Arbor since his undergraduate years at the University of Michigan.

"When I was trying to figure out where to settle down, it was really important for me to have a skate park here, not just for myself, but for my son and other youth," Song says.

Song began his third attempt to garner support for a local skate park in 2007. Along with Trevor Staples, a third grade teacher at Burns Park Elementary School, he co-founded the Ann Arbor Skatepark Action Committee (AASAC).

Some might assume that Staples and Song are the pied pipers to a hoard of grungy, teenage punks, but Ann Arborites of all ages, educational and career backgrounds, and skating expertise have enthusiastically jumped on board.

"We're not the Hollywood version of skateboarding – punk rockers with mohawks," Staples says. "We're around our 40s and late 30s. People take their kids to the skate parks now."

Which isn't to say Ann Arbor doesn’t have a rich skating culture. It does. Skateboarding World Cup pro champion Andy MacDonald skated in Ann Arbor before making headlines, and the city boasts an estimated 5,000 skaters between the ages of eight and 40 years old. Song has a wide range of enthusiasts to draw upon, and now skaters and non-skaters alike have been hitting the streets and scouring rolodexes to turn their skate park dreams into reality.

"We wouldn't have gotten as far as we have if we didn’t have a judge, or a professional fundraiser for the University, or a teacher, or start-up executive," Song says. "That kind of diversity has made a big difference as to how quickly we've been able to do this."

Uphill battle

Song's two previous attempts in 1997 and 2005 mostly fell under the radar due to the lack of diverse leadership and wide-spread community support that has propelled this current project forward. And there's little doubt that the energy and passion of this new coalition has caught the city's attention, garnering vocal  (though not necessarily financial) support.

But if this perfect storm of advocacy was necessary to get Ann Arbor on board, how does this reflect on the city's notion that it's a hotbed for innovative urban ideas? In a more perfect skate-friendly world, the city would put its money where its mouth is and invest in the project. Instead, the City Council and Park Advisory Commission (PAC) have made a cautiously modest commitment – providing park planning expertise from city employees and a future site at Veterans Memorial Park. 

But, where the rubber meets the road, Ann Arbor is essentially cheering on an effort that is expected to pay for itself. It's a wait and see approach that puts the onus on the AASAC to make things happen.

"It’s going to benefit the community significantly through the financial investment that the skate park is making in the city – around a million dollar investment that is coming from outside city operating funds and capital funds," says Carsten Hohnke, city councilman of Ann Arbor’s 5th Ward.

At this point, John Lawter, vice chair of PAC, insists capital funds are unavailable due to tight budgets. When asked about park funding recently used to resurface public tennis courts, he assumed it was earmarked several years ago and, therefore, unavailable to the skate park project. Lawter offers that, as the project develops, the city might assist in ways "that will help offset their costs" such as aiding fundraising efforts and designing the park.

Ann Arbor's track record in accomodating urban recreational trends like these has mostly been conservative. Initiatives like Ann Arbor's dog park, described by Song as "a piece of dirt with a fence around it,"  took many years to come to fruition. Even then, the two spaces are distant from the city's core and require additional support from the county.

Heeding this reality, the skate park group aimed for a space that fit their criteria but ruffled as few neighborhood feathers as possible. Veterans Memorial Park, on the city's west side, was chosen.

"We were looking for areas that were not in someone’s backyard, that were visible and accessible," says Amy Kuras, a park planner with the city of Ann Arbor. "Veterans Memorial Park is already a very active park…It’s also across the street from an active shopping center, on a bus line, has restrooms, things like that."

While Veteran's Memorial Park offers plenty of space (and an active park community) to accommodate something like the skate park, it isn't excatly the walkable ideal that progressive urban communities strive for.

"Our goal wasn’t to fight people for land," Song says. "We’d all love to see a big, giant park in the middle of the city, but that’s not going to happen."

But it has in other cities – Portland and Seattle integrated parks into their downtown areas years ago. The Ballard library looks out onto a public skate bowl and  Portland’s Burnside skate park was built under a bridge on the other side of its downtown.

Admittedly, these are much larger communities with more resources at their disposal. Ann Arbor officials claim it is too limited by its size and available park space to accommodate a 20,000 to 30,000 square foot skate park. And those realities certainly limit the city's options to accomodate such ambitious plans. All told, the skate park group is very happy with the location.

But the very idea of repurposing public land in Ann Arbor has traditionally been fraught with controversy. Consider Huron Hills golf course, which has been the subject of ongoing debates and financial struggles. Suggestions that the city reconsider its commitment to the course have been met by heated opposition.

The golf course also took a big bite out of a $900,000 millage approved by Ann Arborites for park maintenance and improvements. With a dozen other golf courses currently operating in the city, there are those who wonder if some of those resources might have been spared for a single skate park.

Something to look forward to

A half hour's drive away, Farmington Hills’ Riley Skate Park will be opening in June. The Detroit suburb's efforts significantly contrast with Ann Arbor's approach to the project. In 2005, the city of Farmington Hills’ Department of Special Services used funds specifically dedicated to building an inline/ skateboarding facility from a previous millage to design their skate park. With a design ready in March 2006, they focused on advocacy and publicity. 

A few months in, George Riley and the Riley Foundation donated $500,000. By spring of 2007, with $720,000 on hand, they were nearly at their goal of raising $850,000.

"The [Department of Special Services] took a big lead in terms of fundraising and being the main coordinator of it," says Recreation Supervisor Bryan Farmer. "We really wanted to make it happen, too."

While the Ann Arbor Skatepark Action Committee is pushing to break ground within two years, the project’s timeline is at the mercy of fundraising efforts. The committee has anticipated community-driven funding from the start. Shortly after the city gave the "thumbs-up" on Veterans Memorial Park for the skate park’s location in fall 2008, the Ann Arbor Area Community Foundation (AAACF) approved two funds: 90 percent of donations will go to the Ann Arbor Skatepark Fund for designing and building the park, and 10 percent of gifts will go to the Ann Arbor Skatepark Endowment Fund to support future improvements and maintenance.

This past Friday, the group kicked off a weekend of fundraising events with a benefit-art show at Vault of Midnight, raising nearly $8000 toward the park.

"The number one way that people can help us right now is to give money. We understand that this is a tough economy," says Jim Reische, fundraising co-chair and writer for the University of Michigan’s Office of University Development. "But it is so important to…[show that] this is a community that really cares about quality of life here."

And this group dreams big when it comes to creating a destination attractive to skaters, as well as art and environmental enthusiasts. While environmentally friendly designs will manage storm water run-off, builders will use eco-friendly practices in constructing the park.

Unlike typical Michigan skate parks, which tend to be more functional than aesthetically pleasing, Song and Staples want Ann Arbor’s to integrate landscape architecture, natural elements and public art similar to top-of-the-line skate parks on the West Coast.

"The best parks are meant to be beautiful, not just functional and fun in terms of the skating obstacles they present," Song says. "They should be visually appealing and inspiring."

Staples has been shredding through research, testing out a few parks in California, including some by prospective builder Wally Hollyday Design. Choosing a designer is still in the works, and he wants to use top skate park builders.

"Fundamentally, skateboarding is a creative activity," Song says. "There’s a very close and long established culture of art and skateboarding. Every skateboarding deck has art and graphics, and many skateboarders are artists."

Marsha Chamberlin, president and CEO of the Ann Arbor Art Center and member of the Public Art Commission, envisions the creative combination drawing non-skater folk primarily interested in the art.

"There will certainly be people who come to watch the skaters and see how a physical space for something like skating can be a broader part of things when it has the cultural touches of art and so forth," Chamberlin says.

If all goes according to plan, Ann Arbor's skate park could become a model of design, artistry and recreation, something the city can truly crow about.