Thursday, January 21, 2010
The Politics of Skate Parks
Posted by John Branston on Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 10:47 AM
Who would have thought that a skate park would be seen as a threat to a historic neighborhood?
I'm sorry but not surprised that the skate park proposed for Glenview Park has run into opposition and will possibly be built at Rodney Baber Park instead.
Sorry because Rodney Baber Park floods from the Wolf River part of the year and is hard to get to without a car. It's a baseball and softball park on the north end of McLean just north of Interstate 40. It's hard to imagine kids without cars getting over there on their skateboards, but what do I know. I came of age in the Pleistocene Era of hula hoops, pogo sticks and baseball.
I'm not surprised because I know both Councilwoman Wanda Halbert and skate park proponent Aaron Shafer, and I could see this one coming.
Aaron lives in my neighborhood and I met him through his skate park advocacy and faithful readership of The Flyer. We visited Glenview Park together last summer, noting the empty tennis courts and the abandoned baseball field and the more vibrant community center. Both of us played baseball as kids then took up non-mainstream sports when we got older. Aaron had clearly bothered to introduce himself to the community center employees, and he was glad to see them and vice versa.
Wanda and I volunteered several years ago to help start a group called Parents for Public Schools when we both had young children. She was friendly, energetic, and diligent about coming to all the meetings and working with the little group of six or seven of us. Running for the school board, as she did a few years later, seemed a natural progression.
I told Aaron I wondered about the underlying demand for a skate park and the wisdom of putting it in a neighborhood where I did not see kids playing around with skate boards. He thought he could make it work. He is a soft-spoken evangelist for his sport. We talked about the merits of Mud Island, Overton Park, and the fields behind the Memphis Board of Education as alternative sites. We sort of agreed to disagree. Like Wanda Halbert, he organized his supporters. They came out in force for a public skate park in Memphis. The bottom line for me was, give these fired-up folks a chance; tennis courts and baseball diamonds go unused all over Memphis. Try something new, at a modest price.
There's a black-white angle to this. Americans self-segregate on sports, to some extent. Skate boarding is for the most part a white sport, like Ultimate Frisbee and lacrosse and soccer and baseball. Playground basketball in Memphis is for the most part a black sport. I can understand the puzzlement, if not the opposition, of a city council member.
Several years ago there was an outdoor basketball court in my Midtown neighborhood at Williamson Park, a small neighborhood park between two residential streets. The neighbors got the basketball park closed and bulldozed, to make a long story short. Too loud, too many cars, too much litter, too many lights, maybe some fights. You know the drill. A classic case of NIMBY (not in my back yard) with a racial twist. The ballplayers were not from our neighborhood, although, I should add, neither are most of the soccer players who now use the park.
As to whether skate boarding is more or less intrusive than outdoor basketball, I don't really know. I have no experience with skate parks and spent half my childhood dribbling a basketball on my driveway within earshot of the neighbors. The argument that Glenview is historic and skate parks aren't is a smoke screen and ludicrous. The argument that $600,000 is better spent on utility bill assistance is a cop out. We're spending $35 million on a boat dock.
I think Halbert's opposition could be a blessing in disguise for Shafer and his friends. Another location could be better. For a lot of reasons.
Comments (17)
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I will tend to disagree that "Skate boarding is for the most part a white sport...". This may have been the case 20 years ago when I started, but that has long since stopped being the case. Skateboarding has penetrated the urban landscape throughly and has been embraced by all communities. The only two professional skateboarders that have come out of Memphis so far have been black. I grew up skating and still skate with a diverse range of individuals from all races, cultures and economic backgrounds. We came to understand each other through the common ground of skateboarding and I think I came out a better person because of it. I would hate to deprive the children around Glenview of that same opportunity.
To move the park to another area like Rodney Baber would benefit some, yes. It would benefit skaters like me who have transportation to get to the skatepark. Unfortunately, It would not help those that we wished to help when the Glenview location was chosen. Those that don't have access to the transportation or the children who's parents can't afford the gas or the time to take them across town to skate will be the losers in this battle. If I'm willing to drive to Oxford, MS to skate a quality park, I surely wouldn't mind the extra few miles for the Glenview location.
I will take any skatepark we can get. There are benefits to them that stretch far beyond just having a place for us to skate. There are city wide benefits like an improvement in the quality of life for the city. There are also community level benefits in other areas like decreased youth crime that will be lessened in a complex like park like R. Baber. I just feel bad for the people of Glenview that don't get the opportunity to reap those benefits.
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I tend to agree with John Branston. For the most part, I perceive skateboarding as a "white sport" and/or a "suburban sport." If it appeals to blacks, I strongly suspect that appeal is largely limited to a relatively small percentage of black kids who live in the suburbs or exurbs. I think the appeal is practically nil in a predominantly black inner-city neighborhood like the one surrounding Glenview Park, which would make Glenview Park a lousy place to put a skate park. (Unless, or course, the hidden goal of skate park advocates is to somehow slowly convert inner-city black kids to skate boarding.)
Another location would be much better for the proposed skate park.
I’m not completely convinced we need to spend additional millions on paving over even more space on Mud Island for skate board tourists that may or may not come. This would have been a great test to judge the level of interest in a skate park locally which in turn could have been used to inform any decisions regarding size, type and location of a skate park on Mud Island. An expensive experiment, but maybe worth it so we can avoid yet another underutilized concrete albatross out on that wedge of land. I’m not sure a skate park isolated out a Baber Park will really serve as an accurate thermometer.
John, is the cities continued support of the landing assured? If Wanda is as sharp as she is portrayed in your write-up, I find it hard to believe she won’t ax the landing from the capital improvement budget along with the skate park.
Can't we just put it somewhere in the Fairgrounds, which is between several different types of neighborhoods? We certainly have enough land, maybe next to the Kroc Center.
Whether or not the Skate park would benefit in a different location aside, (for the record Overton would probably be the best location) Wanda's arguments were, as always, flawed, unfounded, and racially motivated. This is no way to conduct business which is intended to bring a positive thing into any part of Memphis. Can you imagine if anyone had taken this woman's run for mayor seriously?!
Relevant to the discussion of race and skateboarding (and also awesome):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gl83mI69nX4
Drew/nut: Fairgrounds sounds like a good spot to me, with some neighborhood pop, which you won't get at Baber. The 'boarders are grassroots, they played by the rules, give 'em a shot somewhere with a chance. Can't say on BSL funds, just my guess it will be finished at north of $30m.
"Can't we just put it somewhere in the Fairgrounds, which is between several different types of neighborhoods? We certainly have enough land, maybe next to the Kroc Center."
The land of the fairgrounds that is not part of the Kroc center is owned by the county. The little part that the city did own they sold to the salvation army so they could build a center in he name of a guy who made his living off selling fast food to lower income people and by employing those people at low wages. So basically, you would have to get county approval or get the city to do a land trade. Yes you could maybe bypass Wanda, but either the county is going to have to want to build it or just right back to city approval.
However, if their is so much demand in the city for a skate park, then it sounds like someone should make a private investment and build one. If there is all this demand from all the races and economic groups in the city then it should be able to turn a buck.
Whenever such a major decision is made, the residents of that community should be advised and asked for their input. The Parks Director did NOT talk with or inform Glenview residents of this decision. There is a Glenview neigbhorhood organization that is very active and cares about its neighborhood. Now, they are talking about putting the skate park in another neigborhood without obtaining input from the residents.
Memphis allowed the closure of the Mid-South's only amusement park; then it broke the contract of the roller derby that was bringing thousands of fans to the Fairgrounds and tens of thousands in revenues to the Parks Dept.; now it is ruining the effort to bring a skatepark to Midtown. What is wrong with this picture? Is it so important to the city's vision that families are denied activities that generate FUN?
First of all, skateboarding is very much alive in the African-American community. I know because I regularly see at least 3 groups of kids that skate in my North Memphis neighborhood.
I don't think Glenview was the best choice, though it's proximity to Cooper-Young would have guaranteed use. Tobey Park is a little off the beaten track for most Midtown kids and, besides the flooding, Rodney Baber is a no man's land unless you drive. Overton Park would be convenient to a lot of skaters but there is already parking issues and not a lot of space that folks want to give up.
Williamson Park would be perfect, especially if we install lights to facilitate all night skating. Thanks for the suggestion, John.
Sbanbury- whatever you do, do not say that you are going to install lights for all night skating! That is unless you really want to see the wrath of neighboring citizens. Nothing would kill putting a skatepark in a neighborhood faster than making that statement. Not many people want to live next to something that's lit up like a football field every night of the week. Even if the amount of light necessary would not be at that amount of lumens, it will still be one of the first things that will come to mind for the average citizen. I worked on a project where the developer was willing to build a lighted community baseball field in order to build a higher density neighborhood (he was trying to get the township to let him build a new urbanist village). The only criticism citizens had of the plan was centered on the blinding light pollution from the baseball field that would no doubt keep them up at night. It might be irrational but it's enough to kill a project.
Otherwise Williamson might work just fine.
Urbanut, I was being facetious about the lights to get a rise out of John, otherwise Williamson would be great. I know my Cub Scouts would love it.
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