Skaters Won’t Get Bored at New Park

The critics have spoken and the verdict is in on Santa Clarita’s new public skatepark:

“Like, totally dank.”

In the argot of teenage skaters that is high praise indeed. Far from Webster’s definition of the word as “disagreeably damp,” skaters say “dank” is like “radical,” “cool” and “the bomb” all rolled into one. Definitely good, that is.

On Friday, a handful of local skateboard enthusiasts took their first spins around the $300,000 skatepark on Golden Valley Road, which will officially open to the public today. With 11,000 square feet of skating area and an impressive array of features with names like “Double-bowl,” “Pyramid,” “Q-Pipe” and “Spine Ramp,” they were not disappointed.

“I think it’s great. I’ve never skated in anything like this before,” said 16-year-old Saugus resident Jim Bowers. “I think it’s cool that it’s free. It gives us someplace to go so people don’t get mad at us for skating on their property.”

Plans to build a public skatepark in Santa Clarita began moving forward two years ago when a group of skaters and their parents proposed the idea to the City Council. With the widely seen bumper sticker slogan “skateboarding is not a crime” as their credo, they asked for a safe, legal and hassle-free place to enjoy their sport.

The park places the city at the forefront of a growing list of Southern California municipalities that are either building or considering public facilities to give skateboarders and in-line skaters an alternative to streets, parking lots and shopping malls.

Santa Clarita spokeswoman Gail Ortiz said that a 1997 state law adding skateboarding and roller-blading to a list of inherently hazardous activities--such as pistol and rifle shooting and tree climbing--has reduced cities’ potential liability in accidents, paving the way for a new wave of public parks.

“This is becoming a trend in Southern California. The liability issue was a huge obstacle,” Ortiz said. “Now we’re getting calls from a lot of other cities that are interested in building skateparks and want to see what we are doing.”

Santa Clarita’s skatepark was designed by Lawrence Moss and Associates, a Glendale-based landscape architecture company. The Santa Clarita skatepark was the company’s first but designer Loren Pluth, who consulted with professional skaters and local youth on the project, said the company is now designing parks for the cities of Palmdale, Glendora, La Verne, Lompoc and Hermosa Beach.

“They’re really in demand,” Pluth said. “You go anywhere and you see people skating, but there are not that many [specialized] places for them to go.”

That’s been a problem for deputies at the Santa Clarita station of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, who regularly receive calls from business owners complaining about skaters on their property, said Lt. Carl Deeley.

“It kind of makes us the recreational bad guy, which is a tough position for us to be in,” Deeley said. “Most of them are good kids but a lot of times they are trespassing.”

With its two-level geometrical layout of concrete bowls, ramps, rails and obstacles, the Santa Clarita skatepark is expected to draw big crowds. It is located far from busy streets adjacent to a new $2.5-million city sports complex that is scheduled to open in December.

Deeley said deputies will make the skatepark, which will be open daily from 7 a.m. to dusk, part of their regular patrols. A sign posted at the gate reminds skaters to obey rules such as wearing protective headgear and knee and elbow pads. A recreational supervisor will be nearby in the sports complex, but the park will be mostly unsupervised, Ortiz said.

“We’ve told the kids that this is their park and they have to be responsible for it,” Ortiz said. “If they tag it, they will have to clean it before they skate. There will be no skating if there is graffiti or other problems.”

While some residents worry about the lack of direct supervision, most give the city credit for following through on its promise to create opportunities for young people. More than one-third of Santa Clarita’s approximately 150,000 residents are under 20 years old.

But youth will not be the only group served.

Thirty-seven-year-old Valencia resident Ariel Shaw, a former competitive skateboarder who is now an executive at a company that produces movie special effects, was among the first to strap on his headgear Friday.

“It’s really a wonderful subculture; everyone is out to have a good time. No one vibes anybody or talks any smack,” said Shaw, who estimated he would skate at the park two or three times a week.