Skateboarders, neighbors offer feedback
Design could be finalized during winter, skate park built in spring
Borough officials and outside experts want to hear from Lansdale residents about what they’d like the planned borough skate park to look like, and Wednesday night marked the start of several months of discussion to shape those plans.
Design expert Jesse Clayton and landscape architect Al Gryga led a public discussion Wednesday night that drew input from dozens of skateboarders and neighbors, as they work to shape the park.
“I want the park to encompass all styles. I don’t want it to be something that’s exclusive,” Clayton said.
“You look at any well-rounded park, they serve every user group: the people that just want to flow around, the street skaters that want to do more trick-oriented obstacles, and then the transition skaters that just want to be in a big bowl,” he said.
Over the past two years, borough officials have discussed potential locations of a park for skateboarders, and ultimately settled on a portion of Fourth Street Park just north of a parking lot and west of the swimming pool there. Since this spring, the
two consultants have been brought on board to come up with a concept for the skate park, and Clayton explained the three different general styles of park that could be featured in portions.
Street skating layouts are largely flat with the occasional ledge or bench for skaters to try, and the nearest street-heavy park is located in Ambler. Flow parks feature more ramps, for users to build up speed, and can be seen at the Gray’s Ferry and Granahan skate parks in Philadelphia, while transition skate parks feature larger bowls and elevations.
The Lansdale park is still in the design stage, but Clayton said he’ll recommend that no more than 50 percent of the planned 8,600-square-foot skate area be dedicated to one style, so there is room for at least 25 percent of the area
to go to each of the other two styles.
“So even if you’re somebody who likes (transition), and that’s all you skate, you’re not going to go there and it’s all ledges. There’s going to be a wall, there’s going to be something you can skate,” Clayton said.
Skaters and neighbors who attended the meeting were given a sheet showing a dozen different types of park features, including quarter pipe ramps, flat bars, ledges, flow bowls, pyramids, and steps, and asked to choose the top five obstacles they’d like to see in the Lansdale skate park. Fliers also asked for information on their age, the time of day they would use the park, and whether they would use it for skateboards, BMX bikes, or scooters, and the same forms can be downloaded from the borough’s website and submitted by emailing info@5thpocket.com by Friday, Nov. 10, so the design experts know what the town wants — and what to avoid.
“I’ve been part of a skate park where we just go in and build it all (transition), and not a single ledge, and the kids show up and are like ‘Really? You can’t even put one ledge in? There’s room for one right here,’” Clayton said.
Councilman Leon Angelichio asked for specifics of construction materials that are used in modern skate parks, and council member Carrie Hawkins Charlton said she tried to flag down skateboarders she saw at York Avenue Elementary School earlier in the day to recruit them to the meeting.
As the skateboarders shared their thoughts on the features within the skating area, Gryga asked neighbors what they would like to see in terms of buffering and landscaping around the park. Michael Schattman of Sixth Street said he was glad to hear the park would have no lighting and upgraded drainage over the way the park is now, but said he was wary of a proposal to add an entrance near Fourth Street.
“I share the concern that folks have about the youngsters who would be using their skateboards, which is logical — they’re kids, that’s what they do,” he said.
“At some point, there’s going to be a collision between a car and a kid on a skateboard, and the skateboard is going to lose,” he said.
Gryga said the main concerns he heard were drainage, noise, and visual aesthetics, and said all of the concerns would be addressed in the concept rendering the team hopes to develop by next month.
“We’re here to try and gather public input, and this is still step one, the first of several meetings we’ll have,” Gryga said.
“There was an issue with storm water, but we’re going to manage the storm water of any impervious surface we generate. We can’t manage it for the whole park, but we can for any that we create,” he said.
Skaters Justin Mondschein and Dan Pancoast said they remembered earlier efforts to design a local skate park in the late 1990s, and remembered skating indoors in a facility near Route 309 until it closed in 2003, and can’t wait to have a new skate park that offers more than Wedgewood.
“It’s great for what it is, it’s important for our community to have that ... but at this age, I think lesserimpact is good too,” Mondschein said.
Skateboarders Bill Simpson, Austin Chhinkhathork, and Giuseppe Cucuzza said they each have their own thoughts on what would make a great skate park, but will be glad to see any final design that features multiple styles.
“If you ask them it’ll be different. If you ask us, it’ll be different. We grew up with street parks, they grew up with transition parks. The way I think we’re learning is toward one that’s a happy medium,” Simpson said.
Clayton and Gryga said they would incorporate feedback from Wednesday night’s public meeting into a conceptual design to be presented and discussed further in December, bids could go out in the spring, and the project could be done by summer — and Clayton said the rectangular area shown on concept plans will almost certainly change as plans are finetuned.
“Whether it’s more transition, or street, or a flow park, we still would like the shape to be something more interesting than a square. We’ve gotta make it a little funky,” Clayton said.