Saturday, March 6, 2004

The battle of Ballard Bowl begins

By ELAINE PORTERFIELD
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

To stand at the steep edge of the bowl at the Ballard skateboard park is enough to make your knees weak. To watch a skateboarder confidently plunge over that concrete edge on four rapidly spinning wheels can bring on full-blown vertigo.

"I like the rush," said Chris Townsend, sweating lightly from a few flawless runs through the bowl. "It's a technical sport, one of the toughest out there. It just feels good."

		Karen Ducey / P-I
	Max Hohlbein, 14, left, and Jeff Mehiel, 15, get ready to skateboard in the Ballard Bowl. A petition drive to save the bowl from being torn down begins today.

Said park regular D.J. Van Hollebeke: "There are so many possibilities, so many tricks -- it's always fun."

But the park, so revered that it draws skateboarders from around the region, may not have much of a future in Ballard as the city develops a new park at the site. At a public meeting Tuesday, the Seattle Parks and Recreation Department will present a plan for the 1.38-acre site that does not include the "Ballard Bowl."

Instead, the department staff will recommend that the new Ballard Civic Center Park retain just a small skateboard play area that can double as a festival site and that other locations should be found for full-blown skate parks.

Development of the new park is being funded by $2.47 million from a parks levy.

The park site is simply too small to accommodate the many riders who flock there, staff members say, and private residences are scheduled to be built next door.

But the idea of tearing down the bowl is predictably going over about as well as a January rainstorm among devotees, many of whom are grownups such as Townsend, 21. A skate jam, raffle, barbecue, and petition drive to save the Ballard Bowl kicks off today at the park, 5701 22nd Ave. N.W. It runs from 10 a.m. to dusk. The organizers are asking for donations of canned food for the local food bank.

The park was built in part with volunteer labor, much of it from the skaters themselves, and they know just about every inch of its bowl, ramps and other features intimately. They talk eagerly of how the bowl has been featured on nationally broadcast television shows, how it draws riders from other states, how it accommodates a sport with millions of participants around the country.

Many of the same park users can sound a little sensitive about the image of skateboarders as less-than-desirable park users. But they say they've been careful to keep the Ballard park clean, to try to keep noise down and to enforce responsible behavior.

Kevin Cortez said it was good of the city to allow the Ballard Bowl to be built in the first place, and it ought retain it.

It would be a supreme loss for riders, who, he said, pour their energy into maintaining it.

"Riders do 50 percent of the maintenance here," he said. "During the summer, we power wash it."

He loves his sport passionately.

"Everyone's got their own approach," he said. "It's something that can't be judged."

And he loves the park. Because it was designed by the skateboarders themselves, it has features that keep your interest high, he said. It's the kind of park in which you find endless nuance and challenge every time you ride.

And the riders support one another, offering tips and helping novices get a feeling for the bowl, shaped like a figure-eight swimming pool. Sure, teasing went on as one rider after another tackled the Ballard Bowl one day recently, but plenty of encouragement was heard as well.

Riders at the park range from 4-year-olds to folks in their late 40s, Cortez said.

"It's a classic mix of the community," he said.

Users have kept the skate park up, confirms Dewey Potter, spokeswoman for Seattle Parks and Recreation.

"What it has shown us is the skateboard kids can be really good neighbors," Potter said.

She sighed. It was probably a mistake for the city to allow the Ballard Bowl to built in the first place, Potter said; it was never meant to be permanent.

"It was temporary. But temporary things take on a life of their own. It's drawing kids from all over King County."

She emphasizes that it's only a staff recommendation to take the bowl out of the park, and that the Board of Park Commissioners and the superintendent will make the final decision. The Parks Department is pulling together a skateboard advisory committee, and her department believes that several skateboard parks are needed in Seattle, Potter said. One area under consideration is Lower Woodland Park, and department staffers are looking for a site in South Seattle.

She hopes the riders understand how tough the issue is, and how bad everyone feels about looking elsewhere for a skateboard park.

"You get attached and feel like you own it," she said. "A bunch of people are going to be unhappy whatever we do."

PUBLIC HEARING

A Parks and Recreation Department public hearing on the Ballard project is scheduled from 7 to 9 p.m. Tuesday in the Segway Building, 5701 22nd Ave. N.W.

The Board of Park Commissioners will hold another public hearing during their meeting at 6 p.m. April 8. That meeting will be held in the boardroom in the Parks and Recreation Department headquarters at 100 Dexter Ave. N.

View project information on the Web at:

www.seattle.gov/parks/proparks/projects/ BallardMunicipalCenterPark.htm