As Warren skateboard park nears fruition, some object to placement

Photo

Tim Bowers

Acting Chief Tim Bowers said that if the skate park is placed in a remote location, it will be ‘junk in a year.’

By Ed Runyan

WARREN — After years on the drawing board, the city may be close to awarding a contract to build a public skateboard park, but now it’s unclear where it will be built.

The park is designed as a concrete area 40 feet by 80 feet containing a couple of quarter pipes, a grind rail and a miniramp. These are pieces of equipment on which you ride a skateboard. Around it would be an 8-feet-wide oval track for roller or inline skaters and a fence to keep people out when the park closes around dusk.

The city had proposed that the park be built on the former Turner Middle School site just south of Packard Park on Mahoning Avenue. The city obtained a $75,000 federal grant in 2004 to pay for it.

But about a dozen people living on Mahoning Avenue near the site attended a Community Development Committee meeting Monday to urge city officials to find a different location.

“It’s going to be right in front of our home. Why there? Everyone there is older people. The potential for noise and disturbance is very great,” said Belinda Johnson.

“We want the skate park like anybody else, but we don’t want it right in front of our home,” said her husband, David Johnson.

“I didn’t buy on Mahoning Avenue to have all that confusion,” added Rita Tura.

After Scott Bluedorn, who lives in the Packard Apartments just south of the Turner site, said Packard Apartment residents are concerned that criminal activity will increase near the park, Mayor Michael O’Brien asked what evidence people have that crime will increase.

“Somehow there’s a negative connotation with skateboarders. Where did that come from?” the mayor asked.

Citizens said research indicates there is nearly always trouble around a skate park.

O’Brien said the park will move skateboarders away from the World War II Monument near Courthouse Square, the downtown sidewalks, the steps in front of St. Mary’s Catholic Church and St. Demetrious Hellenic Orthodox Church, and the Amphitheater.

“Skateboarders are constantly told where they cannot be,” O’Brien said. “Someone explain how there’s going to be a rash of break-ins because skateboarders are skating where they belong.”

Councilwoman Helen Rucker, D-at large, said the Mahoning Avenue location was selected because it is in the open, thereby reducing the bad behavior and vandalism.

The only other location considered in the past was Field 3 in Perkins Park, Rucker said. Former Police Chief John Mandopoulos advised against it because it is too remote to monitor.

“If you put it out of the way, it will be junk in a year,” said Tim Bowers, acting police chief, adding that such a park will not be attractive to skateboarders and won’t be acceptable to the parents of the skateboarders.

Councilman Al Novak, whose 2nd Ward includes the Packard Park area, said it makes sense to look at alternative locations for the park and show the residents that their input is valued.

“All I’m asking is to put the brakes on,” Novak said to O’Brien. Rucker agreed that she would like to look at alternative locations before allowing the project to move forward on the Turner site.

After the meeting, O’Brien said he would agree to look at other sites but added he thinks the contract for construction could be awarded without knowing where it will be built.

Bowers urged city council to make sure the project includes surveillance cameras because they can reduce a lot of bad behavior. Officials noted that other parks are in use in Liberty, Cortland and Newton Falls.

David Helman, 18, of Warren, who attended the meeting with about four other teens, said he’s unhappy that city officials think that BMX-type trick bicycles should be banned from the park. Many skateboarders are also BMX riders, he said.

runyan@vindy.com