Skateboarders see their parks closing - and officials say skaters can blame themselves

From the Press of Atlantic City, 2/01/2010. Rob Spahr, Staff Writer

A group of teenagers makes its way to the municipal skate park on a weekday afternoon as the sun sets on Ocean City.

The gate at the entrance to the newly refurbished $132,482 park is locked by a thick chain, but that’s not much of a deterrent as the teens squeeze through a small gap between the gate and perimeter fence with their skateboards. If that didn't work, they said would have just entered through one of the half-dozen holes cut in the perimeter fence by vandals.

All the skaterboarders had to do was walk into the recreation building next to the park and ask an employee to open the gate, but many skaters don't do that because they don't want to comply with the city's requirement that all skaters must wear protective gear.

"The park is never open and no one wants to wear all that stuff or have to deal with anyone in there," one of the 15-year-olds said. "It's easier to just sneak in."

Mike Dattilo, the city's director of community services, said the park is usually staffed during set operating hours to make sure all users obey the rules.

"But when it is not staffed, vandalism and noncompliance becomes an issue," he said.

While Dattilo said Ocean City is determined not to let the vandalism and misuse close the park, several other southern New Jersey municipalities have recently scrapped their skate parks — or discussed it — as a result of similar problems.

The parks have become a hard sell to to pennywise taxpayers.

"There's no justifying it to taxpayers," said John Kilmurray, the recreation director for Lacey Township, Ocean County, where a $200,000 skate park that is only three years old has already needed more than $10,000 in repairs. "We're getting to the point where something may have to be done."

Shattered Pipe Dreams

Dozens of area youngsters found that out when Mullica Township abruptly closed its skate park.

"I didn't find out until the day it happened," said Mike Ware, 18, of Mullica Township, Atlantic County, who also started skateboarding at the park and progressed into BMX riding there. "It's a shame, because it was a nice park and a lot of people used it."

Mullica Township invested more than $140,000 in taxpayer dollars in the park, but felt it made more fiscal sense to pay another $2,000 to dismantle the 5-year-old facility rather than to let the popular recreational facility stay open for another day. Workers dismantled the park two months ago.

"It was an attractive nuisance that was the source of a lot of abuse and misuse," Mayor Michael St. Amour said. "Obviously we were expecting to have to pay for some routine maintenance. But what we were getting was kids actually cutting the fences and damaging the picnic benches and garbage cans outside of the skate park, as well as damaging the Pine Cone Zone where young children play. We even have video of them going off the roofs of gazebos on bikes, when bikes weren't even allowed in the skate park."

According to the township's Chief Financial Officer Dawn Stollenwerk, the normal maintenance costs for the $102,000 facility should have been about $3,000 per year, but about $7,000 to $10,000 was actually spent each year largely due to vandalism.

Mullica Township is not alone:

* The $100,000 skate park at Amanda’s Field in Upper Township in Cape May County was closed until furthur notice last week, according to Recreation Supervisor Brenda Layton, after town officials grew frustrated with the failure of users to obey posted rules.
* In 2007, Stafford Township in Ocean County dismantled its state-of-the-art, $275,000 skate park after it was open for only eight years. It spent an extra $24,000 on security cameras, $40,000 to replace perimeter fencing, and $3,000 on a gate designed to keep bicycles out in an attempt to just keep the park open. But the gate was soon sawed off by vandals with power tools and the park closed a few months later.
* In Atlantic County, Hamilton Township closed its 4-year-old, $25,000 skate park in 2008, according to its recreation coordinator, Sue Giberson, who attributed the facility's closure to the township's inability to staff it full-time, separate skaters of different skill levels, or have acceptable "transition or buffer" between the attractions and the adjacent fence.
* Lower Township in Cape May County dismantled its $55,000 skate park three years ago after it was only open for about six years, citing lack of use, vandalism and misuse.

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