City should roll with skateboard decision

Seattle's Parks Board showed sound judgment by locating a skate park in Lower Woodland Park, a welcome outlet for Seattle's vert-starved skaters. Now the Parks Department needs to find space for more skate parks.

Mention of skate parks throughout the city is sure to trigger the radar of neighborhood protectionists. If the Parks Department handles the placement of future skate parks like it did the Lower Woodland Park site, there will be no reason for NIMBY resistance. The department listened to an advisory committee of skaters and neighbors before voting 5-0 Thursday night to locate the skate park in the preferred spot of the neighborhood. Skateboarding, no longer the obsession of the underground, has been around long enough that there are now generations of skaters. A Seattle Times story this week estimated there are 20,000 skateboarders in Seattle.

With the closing of the skate park at Seattle Center by year's end, those thousands of skateboarders will either be funneled into the Ballard Bowl, the only place in the city where skateboarding is legal, or use hand rails and library steps to practice their passion.

The Parks Department plan to put a skate park in four quadrants of the city is a good start. The city should consider what Portland is doing for its skaters. That city plans to build 19 skate parks.

Having more skate parks is a good idea that allows for smaller neighborhood parks that can be easily reached by skateboard.

Neighborhoods need not fear skaters if the Lower Woodland Park process is how the Parks Department plans to bring skate parks to all corners of Seattle.