COSTA MESA

A growing number of people are fighting the city’s plans to construct a skate park on Charle Street, believing other sites would be much better.

“We won’t stop until the bulldozers start digging there,” said Mike Scheafer, a parks commissioner, who helped form Citizens for a Quality Skate Park. The city is scheduled to break ground on the project this fall.

Scheafer said the group’s more than 85 members believe the site at Charle and Hamilton streets, which the City Council approved in November, would be unsafe for young skaters.

But Councilwoman Libby Cowan defended the Charle and Hamilton spot. She said Scheafer should wait for blueprints and cost projections for the chosen location before condemning it.

Cowan said it would bring one more recreational facility to a neighborhood starved of places for children to play. And she said the Charle and Hamilton site is far from being isolated:

“It’s near a bus line and fast-food outlets, where all the kids will go.”