(Click to enlarge)

View from neighborhood
(Click to enlarge)

Overview

You may be surprised to learn that the planned site for the Lower Woodland Skate Park has been quietly switched to a new "Green Lake Neighborhood" site a mere 108 feet from neighboring homes.

You may also be surprised to discover that this project has quietly grown from a reasonably sized neighborhood skate park to a multi-phased national-destination skate park that will consume the last of Lower Woodland Park's open space as it sprawls to over five times the size of the Ballard Bowl.

The Lower Woodland community is pro-skate park. We were fully supportive of a skate park at the original "chips site," a location farther west that was adedquately buffered from the surrounding community. We were also supportive of the proposed alternate "triangle site" farther north. This project was a success story waiting to happen, a project that promised to bring the community together.

With this surprise switch to the Green Lake Neighborhood Site, however, that's all changed. This site will adversely affect the neighborhood, the park, and ultimately the future of skateboarding in Seattle.

Neighborhood impact

• The new Green Lake Neighborhood site will be only 108 feet from neighboring homes. How do we know? We went to the local hardware store, bought a distance- measuring wheel and measured it, using the Parks Department's own skate park schematic as our guide.
• Given its proximity and location on an elevated field fronting the neighborhood, a person can stand at the skate park site while another person stands on a porch at a home across the street, and easily have a conversation. How do we know? We tried it.
• In terms of noise, the occasional cheer from the soccer or softball fields has much less impact than the constant clatter and grind of a skateboard park.
• Proponents claim that traffic will be a "buffer" but traffic is typically only significant during rush hour.
• The "official" hours of the park will be 4am to 11:30pm. Really.
• However, skateboard activists themselves in a recent public Parks Dept. meeting admitted "the ugly truth" that it'll be used 24/7.

Park impact

• This will eliminate all grassy open space between the south (#2) soccer field and the baseball cloverleaf.
• As the last scrap of Lower Woodland Park that isn't fenced in or graveled over, it's become the staging, warm-up and spectator area for many other local sports, not to mention the only place for neighborhood kids to play, for people to walk their dogs, fly kites, read a book or just hang out. How do we know? We live here, and see it in use daily.

The new "surprise" skate park

• Before we shone a spotlight on the issue, any mention of this switch to the Green Lake Neighborhood site was utterly absent from any announcement, posting or meeting minutes searchable online.
• Dozens and dozens of neighbors are now concerned about this, and every single one of them -- without exception -- was completely surprised by this news of the site switch.
• As the skate park's moved, it's also grown: The best way to gauge the long-term vision of this skate park is to consult the proponents' own materials. This brochure describes the vision for a 25,000 square-foot site (over 5x the Ballard Bowl) with bleachers, lights and a PA system: click for brochure
• This schematic shows later phases being built back to the very same "dangerous" woods at the "chip site" that were the ostensible cause of so many initial skater-parent concerns: click for schematic
• This Green Lake Neighborhood site is not a "compromise," as it gives zero weight to the concerns of its neighbors.
• This seems to be part of a larger and disturbing pattern with how the city treats its neighborhoods. Coming on the heels of the Woodland Park Zoo parking garage fiaco and the Gas Works concert series fiasco, we're wondering where the city leader is who's going to stand up and say "this has to stop."

Press coverage

• Seattle Post-Intelligencer: Skate-park site raises hackles
• Ballard News-Tribune: Where skate Woodland?

Be heard

If you agree that a better home may be found for this skate park, please either attend the public meetings, contact the Parks Board, or both!