Ventura Hires Skateboard Parks Builder

The City Council on Monday awarded a $120,000 construction contract to build three small skateboarding parks in the east, west and midtown sections of the city.

The approval represents a promise kept to local skaters, who in recent years have been booted from commercial parking lots and downtown streets because of merchants’ safety concerns.

Construction of the 3,400-square-foot parks is expected to begin in four to six weeks and be completed by May, said senior construction engineer Bob Zastrow.

The building contractor, Driveway Specialists Inc. of Thousand Oaks, will build the parks at West Park, Hobart Park and Pacific High School.

The circular, bowl-like parks will be about 65 feet in diameter and 3 1/2 feet deep, with various curbs and mounds to simulate skaters’ favorite spots on city streets and parking lots.

“What we’re trying to do is make some modest facilities in our existing neighborhoods that will attract the neighborhood kids and neighborhood skaters and keep down their use of places where people don’t want them to be,” Public Works Director Ron Calkins said.

But officials also have been careful not to spend money building parks skaters will not use.

The mini-park designs in part were drawn by the skateboarders themselves under the direction of city-hired architect Ken Wormhoudt of Santa Cruz.

Wormhoudt, who in August died of pancreatic cancer, held a workshop in which skateboarders molded their dream parks out of clay. He then incorporated those ideas into his final designs.

If the parks prove popular, the City Council may consider spending the remainder of a $350,000 pot set aside for skateboard park construction on other mini-parks, or even a larger, 9,000-square-foot facility, Calkins said.