news story / By Heidi Walters

Slow Skating

Raising cash for a skate park in Mack Town ain’t for quitters

(Feb. 9, 2012)  At first, all was dandy. It was the year 2000, and a grandma in McKinleyville named Pat Hassen had launched a project dear to her three grandsons’ hearts into a magnificent ollie: She and a bunch of others were going to get a skateboard park built. It would be more than that — scooter riders and BMXers and rollerbladers could use it, too. It was going to be world-class, designed and built by Grindline, a Seattle company touted as the best by bigshots in the skate industry. It would be expensive, sure — about $350,000, possibly more. But, with its full pipe and other tricks, it might cause Oregon-bound Bay Area skate pros to divert their route from I-5 to 101 so they could jog up to McKinleyville. There wouldn’t be one like it till you hit Ukiah, going south, or Brookings going north.

By 2001, the McKinleyville Skate Park Organization had some money rolling in, including a $10,000 grant from Simpson Timber. More important, the McKinleyville Community Services District board of directors had jumped onto that soaring, ambitious plank and offered, tentatively, a spot in Hiller Park, across the freeway from the main part of town. Once the skate park was built, the district would maintain it. In 2007 the site was switched to Pierson Park, in the center of town and deemed ideal by the skate folks.

Timothy Garcia, left, and Vincent Peinado on the pyramid at the Arcata Skate Park. PHOTO BY HEIDI WALTERS

GALLERY >

Slide ahead to February 2012, and where is the skate park project? Still hovering in the air, not even quite mid-jump yet, and there’s no telling when it might be ripping down the back swell toward a glorious smooth landing, pulled by gravity and success. Money’s the main problem — the organization needs to raise more than $350,000 to build the park, and to date has only raised $87,000 in cash or cash commitments. And because it has been slow to raise funds, the skate park group recently lost, at least temporarily, its preferred site as well as a pledge of $25,000 in what are called Quimby funds from the district.

The district says it wants to keep working with the organization, but for now it needs the Pierson land and the funds to use as leverage to attract matching grants for other, more likely projects — in particular, for furnishing a soon-to-be-built teen center. But MCSD Parks and Recreation Director Jason Sehon says the district remains committed to providing land and Quimby funds to the skate park when it’s closer to its funding goals.

“We are not trying to ‘squash the skate park,’” Sehon said last week. “But they’ve been raising funds for the past 12 years, and they still have a long ways to go.”

It’s a bit of a quandary, really, for the skate park organization, which also had relied on the funds and the specific land to try to entice grant givers and other potential donors. Plus, the organization already commissioned a project design from Grindline specifically for the Pierson site. But skate park organization president Charlie Caldwell said he could see the services district’s point in wanting to leverage support for the teen center, a project that’s ready to go now.

“I’m not in disagreement with them in that,” he said. “I’m a youth pastor; I work with teenagers. But it is going to make it harder for us.”

An outsider might look at the situation and say, well, that land and those funds haven’t exactly brought dumploads of cash in yet, have they? Twelve years and they’ve raised just $87,000?

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