LA PALMA : Skateboarding Ban Sought for Center

The owners of a large commercial and retail center will ask the City Council tonight to consider banning skateboarding and roller skating on their property.

At the 42-acre Centerpointe La Palma plaza, skateboarders have ripped out concrete parking stall dividers to build jumps, chipped corners from buildings and scratched the paint off benches in the process of performing tricks, property manager Julie Olin said Monday.

Skateboarders not only cause physical damage, but the wax from their skateboards stays on walkways and benches around fountains, creating a gooey mess that bonds dirt to the surfaces, Olin said. Steam cleaning is needed to clean the wax off, she said.

The building’s owner, Birtcher Campbell Properties, also is worried that the campuslike plaza, containing a hotel, offices, restaurants and shops, has become an “attractive nuisance” and could open the company to lawsuits if a skateboarder is injured or hurts someone else while doing tricks, she said.

Birtcher Campbell Properties has asked the city to extend La Palma’s current skateboarding ban to its commercial center. La Palma currently prohibits skateboarding in the City Hall area and the area around the community center.

The council is expected to consider changing the law at its 7:30 p.m. meeting.

If the council wants to adopt a law against skateboarding, the law would probably take one of three forms, City Atty. Joel Kuperberg said Monday. The council could ask that the law cover the entire city, that it pertain to certain designated areas, or that it apply to all areas where property owners post signs prohibiting the activity, he said.

Several other Orange County cities ban skateboarding from some commercial areas, including Yorba Linda, Newport Beach, Huntington Beach and Dana Point.