Delridge meeting #2 a huge success

Despite the immediate lack of construction funding, the Delridge community came out in force to support and participate in the design process for the proposed skatepark in their neighborhood.

The meeting started with a nice intro and overview from Parks’ Kelly Davidson, which ended with a reminder that the Parks Department is actively looking for ways to fund the project.  One option she proposed, was applying for the opportunity funds in the upcoming Parks Levy.  But the outlook for breaking ground is still 2010 at best, and that’s if one of the few options available for skatepark funding develops into actual cash.  Kelly reminded everyone that they should be actively lobbying the City Council to keep the project in the forefront of their minds.

Next up was Nancy Folsom, a neighbor who lives across the street from the park, and Randy Engstrom, executive director of Youngstown Cultural Arts Center, to discuss the public art piece of the project.  Randy and his team secured a grant to pay for a parallell process that will focus on building an art component of the skatepark.  The skatepark site is right at the NE corner of the park that is often seen as the gateway to the Delridge neighborhood, so the neighbors would love to have a showcase piece of public art that welcomes you into the neighborhood and the skatepark.  They presented the process, Nancy had some conceptual images for what the art could look like, and they were collecting signatures from anyone who wanted to be involved.

At that point the Abbotswood/Grindline team took the stage and presented a pretty long and exciting video that showcased a lot of Grindline parks, and highlighted the company’s West Seattle history.  After the video, there was a short PowerPoint presentation that gave the audience a very quick and shallow overview of the Abbotswood/Grindline design methodology, some examples of what makes a successful skatepark, and an evaluation of the current site.

Some details emerged last night that were previously unknown, primarily the target footprint size which is now 10,000 sq/ft.  This is down a bit from the original plan, largely due to the limited funds available for the design process.  The upside is that the conceptual images that Micah showed with a 10K skatepark at the site seemed to look like a good fit.  He also showed some similarly sized parks like Yakima that looked like they managed to fit a lot of fun terrain into that footprint.

Finally there was a short design charette where people broke into tables and discussed ideas for the new park.  There was a diverse group of skaters at the meeting, and it seemed like some of the street vs. transition conflict that’s plagued other skatepark design meetings in Seattle was not present at Delridge.  Everyone seemed like they agreed that there should be a good mix, and that all skill levels should be served.  Some of the ideas that came up were:  a snake run, rebuilding the legendary Schmitz Park bowl that started it all, actual vert in the bowl, a signature feature that is recognizable, a 10ft deep end, multiple types of coping, and much more…

The big take-away from the night was how many people showed up, and how diverse the crowd was.  The room was completely full, and it contained multiple generations of skaters, non-skating neighbors, community artists interested in the arts component of the project, and all of the West Seattle local media.  The Delridge skatepark process continues to be an exemplary model of a community all getting behind a skatepark project, and taking an active role in the process to help make it a positive amenity for the entire neighborhood.

Now if there was only funding….