Local skateboarders put in about $300 worth of concrete ramps, cleared away trash and built themselves a tidy little skate park on city land near the Yahara River recently. They just didn’t tell the city.
The boarders have now run afoul of the City Parks Division, which Tuesday confiscated the boarders’ tools, including a trash can, trowel and brooms, and chipped away at the concrete ramps.
Ben Wilson, a skateboarder from Madison, said Madison city officials have long promised but failed to deliver a park for skateboarders. "We need a place to thrash that’s good," said Wilson, who works at a Monroe Street takeout restaurant.
But City Parks Superintendent Kevin Briski Wednesday said the boarders are done at that site.
"Anyone can’t come in and start building their own park (on city land)," Briski said. "There’s codes and rules and policies that regulate anything built on city land. At the end of the day, for it to be a public structure, it has to be designed and engineered to meet the safety standards for such a facility."
The do-it-yourself skate park echoes similar efforts across the country, most notably in Portland, Ore., where locals built a skate park without permission under a bridge. It opened in 1990 and was later sanctioned by the city.
The Madison site, which can be seen from the East Johnson Street bridge over the Yahara River just west of First Street, had been used as a campsite by homeless men, Wilson said.
The concrete base had previously served as the floor of a boathouse, Briski said.
Ald. Satya Rhodes-Conway, 12th District, who represents the area, said Wednesday she will try to arrange a meeting between parks officials and the skateboarders. Briski said he would welcome the boarders’ input in designing a skate park as part of the planned Central Park on the Near East Side.
"I really wish they had come to me and the Parks Division first," Rhodes-Conway said.
No comments:
Post a Comment