CAMARILLO : Skateboards Banned at Shopping Centers

Camarillo’s skateboarders will soon have to find another place to practice their sport after the City Council voted unanimously last week to ban skateboarding at selected commercial and retail centers in the city.

The council approved the urgency ordinance Wednesday, making it illegal to use skateboards, roller- or in-line skates at shopping and commercial centers posted with the ordinance. As an urgency ordinance, the law went into effect immediately, subjecting violators to misdemeanor citations.

The ordinance comes after the city received several complaints from merchants and patrons of shopping centers, who claim that skateboarders harassed them.

“We needed a tool to protect our merchants, especially during the holiday season,” Mayor Charlotte Craven said. “Still, it’s our feeling that we need to provide a place for these kids. We will continue to work toward that goal.”

During the height of the summer, skateboarders flocked to the Camarillo Village Shopping Center at Arneill and Las Posas roads because of the site’s terraced parking lots and grades.

A standoff between shop owners, patrons and skateboarders took place at the site, which is anchored by a major supermarket, earlier this year.

“It was really a problem for us,” said Neal Smith, vice president of La Cagnina & Associates Inc., the site’s property management firm. “It was a tough summer.”

Both Smith and Craven said the new ordinance itself won’t necessarily make the problem go away.

Craven said the city will soon hold a second community forum on skateboarding to measure support for the creation of a skateboard park in the city. A date for that forum has not yet been set.