Red tape holds up $2M skate park project

By Robert Behre

Recreational skateboarding differs from the issue of using skateboards as transportation, but recreational skateboarders also have been bruised with bad recent news.

A year ago, the Charleston County Park and Recreation Commission agreed to spend $2 million to build a new skate park — one of the largest on the East Coast– under the Ravenel Bridge in downtown Charleston.

Today, it’s still unclear when construction will begin.

“Is everyone frustrated? Yes,” PRC Director Tom O’Rourke said this week. “The frustration is the project is slower than we’d like it to be, but the project in no way is dead.”

The problem has stemmed from a bureaucratic Catch 22.

O’Rourke said his agency didn’t want to spend $60,000 or so designing the park if the Federal Highway Administration and S.C. Department of Transportation would not allow it in the state right of way under the bridge. However, those agencies have said they need to see a design before giving their blessing.

“We don’t like to spend money unless we know for sure that things are going to work out,” O’Rourke said. “We asked them, ‘Why don’t you give us the parameters so we can do the plan?’ And we went back and forth and back and forth and back and forth.”

O’Rourke said he almost gave up on the site until Charleston Mayor Joe Riley agreed to help get the necessary approvals from the highway agencies.

The bureaucratic standoff has irked those like Shannon Smith, a mom, teacher and avid skateboarder who is on the board of the nonprofit group Pour It Now. She and other Pour It Now members appeared before city officials this week asking for their help in keeping the project on track.

O’Rourke said the Park and Recreation Commission could consider a design-build contract for the park at its next meeting, but he still is unsure when a design will be approved and when construction will start.

“We want to start pouring some concrete,” he added. “I’m sure in a year or two, we’ll look back and be pleased, but right now, it’s pretty darn frustrating.”

Skateboarders face legal roadblocks

Downtown travel mode could soon draw a ticket

By Robert Behre

Jacob Hinton never used his skateboard to get around his hometown of Florence, but when he started classes at the College of Charleston last fall, he found it was the best bet for quick trips downtown.

“It’s safer, more fun and easier to control,” he said of his longboard, a type of skateboard designed more for transit than tricks.

“If you’re going to class, you don’t have to chain it up,” he added. “You can just bring it in with you. You don’t have to worry about it getting stolen.”

William McFadden, 22, a graphic design student at Trident Technical College downtown, has been skateboarding since he was 8 and still uses it to get between his East Side home and class, restaurants and shops.

“It’s a way of transportation for me because I don’t have a car,” he said. “It’s a workout plan for me, too. I can eat anything I want and won’t gain any weight. It’s my everyday exercise.”

Across downtown streets, particularly near colleges, the use of skateboards has risen sharply, much like bicycle use. There’s only one problem: Skateboarding is illegal — at least much of it is — and enforcement is expected to pick up soon.

Enforcement

Until now, skateboard enforcement has been mild.

Both Hinton and McFadden said they have been lectured or warned by police — but not ticketed.

“Once I was skating on the sidewalk, and a cop came up and said, ‘Get off the sidewalk,’ so I’d go in the street,” McFadden said. “One time I was skating in the street, and a cop pulls up and said, ‘Hey, get on the sidewalk.’ ”

However, Charleston City Council soon is expected to give the College of Charleston Public Safety the authority to write municipal tickets so college officers will be able to enforce skateboarding and other city laws.

College of Charleston Public Safety Chief Paul Verrecchia said the change will give his officers another option.

“There’s no state law that covers skateboards,” he said. “To my knowledge, there’s no county ordinance.”

Charleston Police Chief Greg Mullen said the change stemmed from his conversations with Verrecchia, and Mullen said he hopes enforcement will increase because he is concerned about skateboarders’ safety.

“We want to prevent a tragedy,” Mullen said, adding that if a skateboarder were seriously injured, even killed, then, “Some would ask, ‘Why weren’t you doing enforcement? Why weren’t you taking steps to keep this from happening?’ ”

Verrecchia said: “If I were speaking to students, I would give them a friendly warning that the campus police now have another option at their disposal to enforce the law. … It won’t be just warnings coming from us. It could be summonses — citations to appear in court.”

Legalize it?

Jack Abbott’s Continuum Skateshop on Spring Street does a mix of business, serving those who skateboard just for fun and those who use the boards to get around.

“More and more people are using skateboards to get to class,” he said. “It’s a safe, green healthy form of transportation. It needs to be encouraged, especially the way gas prices are.”

Others are beginning to agree.

Charleston Moves, a nonprofit that advocates human-powered transportation, soon will discuss skateboarding in more depth, as the rise in skateboarding here has mirrored the rise in bicycle use, director Tom Bradford said.

“Personally, I just wonder how it can be outlawed,” Bradford said of skateboarding. “It’s clearly an idea whose time has come.”

Not everyone thinks so. Marvin Katzen drives his “Doin’ the Charleston” tour bus around city streets near the college and has had some ugly brushes with skateboarders, including some who have banged on his bus’ windows and made obscene gestures

“These skateboarders go whipping in and out of traffic, most of the time going the wrong way, particularly on St. Philip Street between Calhoun and Wentworth,” Katzen said. “It’s not a mode of transportation. It’s a toy. The skateboard doesn’t belong on the street.”

But McFadden said he tries to look out for his own safety — and that of others.

“The only type of accident I’ve had on the skateboard is when I hit a rock or didn’t know a curb was coming up,” he said. “I’m constantly looking behind me and in front of me to make sure I’m not hitting any cracks or any pedestrian walking toward me. I try to be conscious of that and respectable.”

Shannon Smith thinks Charleston is a pretty friendly city—unless you’re riding a skateboard. Then this place renowned for its politeness becomes considerably less hospitable. “Even growing up, when we were skating the George Street pool, there was bias against skaters,” says the 39-year-old Charleston native, now president of the local chapter of Pour It Now, a four-year-old skateboarding advocacy group that helps build skate parks around the state. Since joining the nonprofit, she’s seen dozens of facilities pop up across the Southeast, including in Columbia and Bluffton. Despite years of effort, however, Charleston still doesn’t have a major park to call its own. But in late March, the wheels of change were finally set in motion.

On March 29, the Charleston County Park and Recreation Commission (CCPRC) voted unanimously to carve out $2 million for a new downtown skate park. To be located on undeveloped South Carolina Department of Transportation property under the Ravenel Bridge on Meeting Street, the park is currently slated as a state-of-the-art, 40,000-square-foot center with room for enough bowls, half-pipes, quarter-pipes, rails, vert ramps, and stair sets to accommodate the entire Lowcountry skating populous. “It’s a demographic we haven’t done much for,” says CCPRC executive director Tom O’Rourke, who’s been pushing for the project for the last eight months, even taking commissioners on a field trip to a Salt Lake City skate park during a recent national conference.

For Pour It Now, the budget approval is a huge jump in a campaign that hasn’t always been promising. The group first submitted plans for a park to the city more than three years ago, projecting a $1.5 million price tag for a 35,000-square-foot park and gearing up to raise the funds privately. When the city couldn’t help finance the project, Department of Recreation director Laurie Yarbrough and deputy director of parks operations Matt Compton contacted O’Rourke to see if the CCPRC wanted to get involved.

Both O’Rourke and Smith joke about the unlikely partnership. “It’s like skateboarders and government trying to get married,” he explains of the alley-oops that the process has taken. “I’m waiting for Tom to put a ring on my finger,” joked Smith before the meeting.

And O’Rourke has delivered the bling. He envisions the venue being more than a skate park, featuring amenities such as a climbing wall, a pro shop, concessions, and possibly even a connection to the city’s fishing pier on the other side of the bridge. He also talks of the park hosting regional and national skate events, drawing big names from across the globe. “This won’t be like anything anyone has seen in this area,” says O’Rourke. And he now has healthy funding to pull it off.

The park won’t be open anytime soon, though. CCPRC allocated the money in a July 2010 to July 2011 budget; once the funding becomes available, it may take more than a year to finalize design plans and begin construction. In the meantime, the commission will be securing permits and gathering public input on design and usage, including assistance from Pour It Now.

“We’re finally exhaling and feel like we’re passing our baby on to good hands,” Smith says. “They’ll make sure it’s top of the line. It will probably be the best in the country at the time it’s built.” And O’Rourke is happy that an underserved constituency has finally received some long-coming attention. “There are a lot of winners in this,” he says.

This could be truly epic.

The Charleston County Park and Recreation Commission has agreed to spend $2 million to build a skate park — one of the largest on the East Coast– in downtown Charleston.

Two. Million. Dollars.

“It will be quite a large park,” said Shannon Smith, a local mom, teacher and avid skateboarder affiliated with the skate park advocacy group Pour It Now. “We’re shooting for 40,000 square feet.”

At that size, the skateboard park would dwarf the new Owens Field Skate Park in Columbia and would be the same size as the Louisville Extreme Park in Kentucky.

Plans call for creating the park on land along Morrison Drive just north of Huger Street, in the state-owned right of way below the Ravenel Bridge. The city of Charleston and Pour It Now are working with the county PRC on the plan.

The park plan was hailed by local skateboard enthusiasts, including 20-year-old Stephen Pond, who served a 90-day probationary sentence for skateboarding on a city street last year.

“We’ve been ready for a park for a long time,” said Pond, a College of Charleston freshman from Winston-Salem, N.C.

Pond said he and other skaters would use the park, but, he said, he’s not ready to give up skateboarding on city streets, which is illegal. He said he’s been skateboarding since he was about 11 and that his board gets him to classes and takes him on recreational outings.

After Charleston police ticketed him for skateboarding on St. Philip Street, Pond said he went to Charleston Municipal Court and was sentenced to probation.

“I stopped for 90 days, but I’m back,” he declared. “I use my board every day.”

The PRC’s decision Monday to fund the park follows about three years of on-and-off discussions between Charleston city officials and Pour It Now.

“We realized it would be an uphill battle to get the money that we needed, so we approached the PRC,” said Matt Compton, director of the city’s Parks Department. “Everything the county PRC does is first class, they don’t have a facility downtown, and this would allow them to fill a niche.”

The county has three water parks, several beach parks, boat landings, fishing piers, and even a bring-your-own-horse equestrian center, but no skate parks.

“For us, it’s not just a skate park,” said PRC Executive Director Tom O’Rourke. “We will try to include as many things there as possible; maybe some climbing features, or some fitness programs that take the Ravenel Bridge into consideration.”

Pour It Now members often have said that if a city doesn’t have a skate park, then the whole city is a skate park, a theory that was tested in a highly publicized 2006 video showing a skateboarder being shoved into a bush by a city police officer while skating atop a bench at Waterfront Park.

The city, which has a modest skateboard park in West Ashley, was interested in building a substantial skateboard park but didn’t have the funding for a large one.

“We wouldn’t have been happy with it, and we would have had to operate it,” Compton said. “The park they are contemplating would be one of the largest in the Southeast, so it’s sure to be an instant success.”

Like most Charleston County parks, it would not be free, and as with Mount Pleasant’s tiny skateboard park, skaters would be required to wear safety gear.

“We’re government, so it’s going to be really safe, and it’s going to cost money,” O’Rourke said.

How much money, he couldn’t say, but the hope is to keep admission fees reasonable and make money from hosting tournaments and selling concessions.

“That budget (approved by the PRC commission) starts in July 2010, so it’s not time to run out and buy the skateboards yet,” O’Rourke said.

Edward C. Fennell contributed to this report.

The Charleston County Parks and Recreation has approved $2 million to create a skatepark at the foot of the Cooper River Bridge, near Meeting and Huger St. “We’re very excited about this one,” says Executive Director Thomas O’Rourke. “We have enough funding for all of the skate features, which should probably take about $1.5 million alone.”

But they’re not going to stop at just concrete bowls, decks, and ramps. They plan to build a park approximately 40,000 square feet in size, complete with extra features accessible to non-skaters, including a climbing wall. They also plan to offer wellness programs like walking and bike paths that will pair well with the existing Ravenel Bridge walkway.

Getting approved for a project this big was just the first step. Park and Rec will collaborate with the City of Charleston and the Department of Transportation, which currently owns the property they want to build on. And since this project is for the community, the public will have a part in the design process, including surveys and at meetings.

“We will be giving the public every opportunity to put their two cents in,” says O’Rourke.

Work should begin this summer, but until then, skaters will have to be content with sidewalks and railings.

Get the scoop on what, when, and why on their site.

We have word from our down South counterparts that the Charleston County Parks and Recreation has approved $2 million to create a skatepark at the foot of the Cooper River Bridge, near Meeting and Huger St. This has been an ongoing on/off conversation for some time now but it appears the plans are more concrete (no pun intended) at this point.

The park is set to consist of bowls, decks, ramps & more and is anticipated to to cover nearly 40,000 square feet in size with features also available to non-skaters. No word is official on the “other” features except for a climbing wall. The City of Charleston, Department of Transportation as well as the Park and Rec division will be collaborating on the effort and word is the public will have a part in the design process to some extent with work beginning this summer on the project. This is great to see in the area as there are many individuals who have been yearning for a spot like this to support the ever growing movement of skateboarding in the area & I am sure the crew over at Continuum will notice some pickup in business.

Source: The Digitel

Early morning on Feb. 8, a lone bulldozer crushed the curves and edges of a local skatepark known as Wasteland. Born from the rubble of a paper recycling center, the six-month-old concrete park was largely the result of efforts by local skaters and generous donations from a local concrete contractor.

Located between Braswell and Milford streets in The Neck, the park was built on property that is part of the Magnolia Company’s holdings in the area. The skaters did not have official permission to build on the site, but faced no opposition from local development crews and police.

According to skater Bob Hart, “We knew it was going to happen eventually, but we thought they’d give us some kind of countdown.”

The Magnolia Company ordered the park’s destruction out of safety concerns. “We were compelled to keep people off of our property and out of harm’s way,” said Magnolia spokesperson Jonathan Scott. Scott also cited environmental concerns, noting that the environmental clean-up of the once-industrial site is ongoing and the particular area where the skate park was constructed is still contaminated.

The park had humble beginnings as stacks of cinder blocks that local skaters arranged to skate on. The first bags of concrete were bought with their own money and were mixed in buckets. They swept and cleaned the area. Word spread that a new spot had been born.

Marty Swain, manager of Parker Marine Contracting, drove by the site and saw the skaters mixing and pouring their own concrete. He stopped by to ask them what they were doing and found that they were using their own money to build the park. Swain oversees the manufacturing of large concrete piles that are the foundation for many buildings under construction in Charleston. When the piles are created, there is always a little extra concrete left over. Usually, Swain dumps the concrete in a box next to the facility and has it hauled off as junk.

Over the next few months, trucks began to show up at the site to pour some of that excess concrete over the artfully arranged piles of rubble, according to local skater and artist Jon Horne. After hundreds of hours of work by local skaters who shaped and polished the surface, a skatepark came into form and continued to grow as the trucks kept coming. The result was a fairly large complex of curves and obstacles that became a draw for skateboarders from around the region.

The skaters honed their concrete-shaping skills as they went along, and their progression could be seen in the smoothness and refinement of the surface. They got pointers from builders from Grindline, a national company that builds large concrete skateparks.

Swain, for one, was imporessed. “Building it was a very communal activity and a positive thing for young people to do. You had a little bit of sweat and a little bit of fun,” he says.

The park’s presence also had a direct effect on crime in the area. “We used to look out the window and see prostitutes going at it in cars at the end of the road. After the park got built, they disappeared,” says Swain.

As one of Charleston’s few skateparks, Wasteland was visited by skaters of all types, including many families. Mary Chris Garner says she had some great times at Wasteland with her son, Boone.

“I even went by myself even if no one was out there. Beautiful sunsets and post-apocalyptic scenery were meant for each other,” she says.

The skaters plan to rebuild on another site and are searching for something more permanent, possibly an abandoned basketball court in the Rosemont neighborhood.

Until then, the sting of the loss is still felt sharply. “It was everyone’s favorite spot. It’s what we needed. We’re all heartbroken over it. It’s gone now and that sucks,” says Horne.

If you have not picked up a copy of November’s Transworld (p. 162)and The Skateboard Magazine (p. 70), you might want to go out to grab a few copies. Our Charleston key ramp was featured prominently in both. Totally Awesome! Oh and by the way, the cover of that same Transworld is a photo of a Columbia, SC downtown spot – crazy!

Skateboarders don’t see the world like everyone else does.

Stairs are not a way to go up and down, rails are not for maintaining your balance and empty swimming pools are not something to be refilled. They are obstacles on which skateboarders perform, let loose, express themselves and unleash their creativity. They are the means for an entire way of life.
Unfortunately, not everyone sees the same thing. And not everyone can agree on the art of skateboarding.

That’s why there are skate parks.

The three in Charleston are making everyone happy and benefit both skateboarder and community: Ackerman Park in West Ashley, Mount Pleasant Skatepark and The Park in North Charleston. They are providing skateboarders with a place to go as well as a place to call their own and to just have fun, the point of skateboarding.

“Having a skate park benefits you. You get to do what you love to do without being harassed,” said founding partner of The Park, Jonathan Dixon. “Here, it’s a family feel, a backyard feel. Everyone here knows each other and takes care of each other. It just giving kids a place to go. You get to go someplace and do what you love to do.”

Dixon remembers when he was a teenager in Greenville and the fun he had at the city’s newly built skate park. He knows firsthand the benefits of giving youth an outlet for their energy and passion.

“Charleston didn’t really have anything for kids. It’s a beautiful city and nice to cruise around, but kids didn’t really have a place of their own: built by skateboarders, for skateboarders. It’s where you make your friends,” he said.

“My main goal is to make sure kids have as much fun as I did when I was a kid and that skate park was a huge part of it. I made friends for life; because of skateboarding, you have these bonds for life. I just want to give kids a place of their own, a place they can feel comfortable when they come in every day and have fun.”

Mark Friedrich, recreation specialist for the town of Mount Pleasant’s recreation department, agrees.

“It provides a supervised setting, protected from vehicle traffic, for skating and learning to skate. Parents know that their children have a safe, supervised area to skate available,” he said. “As with other athletic facilities, they provide an environment to participate in and master the skills of their sport, improve physical fitness, relax and interact socially.”

Providing skateboarders with safe, adequate facilities just like any other sport is just as important to Ryan Cockrell as it is to Dixon and Friedrich. He’s executive director of Pour It Now, a South Carolina skate park advocacy group.
“We’re a dedicated group of volunteers helping the city harness the positive energy that skateboarders posses and provide recreational opportunities for skaters. Skateboarders outnumber participants in most traditional sports,” Cockrell said.

“The main thing is skateboarders possess an extreme desire to participate in their activity and whether there are facilities or not, they will find a way to skateboard and that can mean negative consequences.

“In every sport, you need to provide adequate facilities for what’s going on. Skate parks, if they’re nonexistent or too crowded, then the skateboarders go elsewhere and recreate where it’s inappropriate. Potentially it’s an organic way to control skateboarding traffic in your city. It’s better to provide facilities that attract skaters out of the streets and into the park.”

By allowing skateboarders an appropriate place to go, they also reap many other benefits. Cockrell explained that skateboarding is so much fun, skaters don’t realize they’re exercising or building life skills.

“I think part of it is that freedom and lack of rules. It’s a goal-oriented, patience-oriented activity and that’s a part of why it’s so fun: you don’t feel like you’re participating in a sport. You don’t have to show up on time, you go at your own pace, your own style. There are no coaches telling you where and when and why and how to do it,” Cockrell continued.

“It’s part sport, part art, part culture. You get a lot of rewards from the amount that you work. That’s a natural, addictive feeling – that feeling of accomplishment. From a basic trick up to the most technical tricks, you have that exact same feeling of accomplishment. You earned it. That ability to practice and understand the pay off of continuing to work at something transfers into your daily life and builds life skills.”

As with any other activity, skateboarding also keeps skaters out of trouble.

“There are some kids that if they did not have The Park, they would be out getting in trouble,” Dixon said. “They say idle time is the devil’s tool. There’s so many kids that instead of getting in trouble, come to the park and skate.”

Dixon, a former school teacher and police officer, has plenty of experience keeping kids out of trouble. Running The Park and being there on a daily basis has made him a role model for many young skaters.

“Sometimes what you say has a bigger impact than parents,” he said. “I have parents that will ask me to talk to their kids if they’re having trouble in school or with their girlfriend or other kids are smoking and they don’t know what to do.”

The positive environment that skate parks provide has been invaluable for many skateboarders. Friedrich, Dixon and Cockrell all agree that skateboarders are some of the most creative, motivated, dedicated and upstanding youth in the community.

“Some people may feel that skateboarders are undisciplined or not interested in academics,” said Friedrich. “We employ two skaters to work our skate park and teach skateboard camps. Both are honor students in high school, one at Wando and the other at the School of the Arts.”

“If you’re a kid, you should only be worried about enjoying life,” Dixon said.

And that’s something everyone can agree on. So in the words of Dixon, shut up and skate.

“The idea of working with various groups that have their own mission or their own vision about how they want to change the city, it may not have to do with urban design, but its still about some of that civic pride and that civic activism that makes for a better community,” Micahel Maher said.

Pour It Now, a skateboard advocacy group is working with the City of Charleston to find a place to build a world class skate park that will give the 5,000 skateboarders in the Lowcountry a safe place to enjoy their sport.
“We want them to understand these kids are brilliant, theyre very creative, intelligent and very skilled, they just don’t have a place to exercise that,” Shannon Smith said.

And Louis Yuhasz of Louies Kids is working to find a solution to childhood obesity and hopes more people will get involved.

“There are 25 million children that are affected by obesity and were just doing our part here in the Lowcountry and trying to bring it to the nation, I think this gives us an opportunity to show people our success here and how were helping kids here climb mountains,” Yuhasz said.

From beautification projects to a push to make charleston more bike-friendly you’ll likely find a cause you care about, and for many it all starts with kids.

In addition to the exhibit, each group will also come in the evenings to answer questions about what each group does specifically to improve Charleston.

“We just developed a program here in Charleston an after school program so were really excited about that, and we have some new things coming up like run-buddies, where well essentially be doing the same thing within this program, but just one-on-one with different athlete mentors volunteers and kids.”

The exhibit opens Friday morning and runs through August 7. The exhibit is free and open weekdays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

The Civic Design Center located at 85 Calhoun Street Downtown.