So skateboarders were surprised when Nickels got on the radio on Monday, May 10, to declare his support for the bowl. "I like the skate park. It has proven to be a very active and positive place. It's gotten younger parks users really engaged in the community," Nickels said, jumping into the debate a few days before the parks department board of commissioners was scheduled to make a recommendation on the skate bowl. (On May 13, the board endorsed keeping the bowl, and last weekend, hundreds of skateboarders celebrated their victories so far with a skate-march through downtown to the Pike Place Market.)
The vote of confidence from Nickels is important. Not only is Nickels the boss of parks department head Ken Bounds (who gets the final call on the skate bowl), but his support shows that when people have good ideas, Nickels responds--even if those ideas contradict the staid neighborhood plans. Much credit for the mayoral nod goes to skateboarder Matthew Lee Johnston and a few fellow skaters, who donned work gloves and pruned a hedge in Ballard alongside Nickels at a non-skate-bowl-related community cleanup last month. Nickels asked who he was, and Johnston was able to put in a good word for the bowl. Evidently, Johnston's case was convincing. "I've come to the conclusion it ought to be part of the permanent park," Nickels said on the radio.
Nickels' verdict on a microcosm neighborhood issue irritated residents like Stephan Lundgren. "Greg Nickels has decided to exercise his bully pulpit once again and decide a matter that is supposed to be in the hands of a properly designated group," Lundgren, who headed up the Ballard Civic Center planning group, said before the parks board made its decision. Though Lundgren is generally pro-skateboarding ("I've still got one in my basement somewhere"), he's worried that money slated for building the park the neighborhood envisioned will now go to the unplanned skate park. Lundgren would rather see the city build what's outlined in the 2002 park plan: a passive, grassy space with "a maritime theme, a large lawn, [and] a central promenade."
Butting in on the Ballard Bowl certainly cements Nickels' reputation as a mayor willing to disregard neighborhood plans. While that's unfortunate for folks like Lundgren, it's great for the city at large. Nickels is looking toward the big picture of a vibrant city full of neat amenities for all the people who live and work here, not just those who spent the late '90s writing neighborhood plans. In Ballard, the big picture is a city that offers places for skateboarders to practice stunts like ollies and fakies. Next week, the big picture could be running the monorail through a dozen neighborhoods. Nickels' ideas may step on neighborhood plans from time to time, but they're ultimately part of making Seattle a better city.
Certainly, neighbors will gripe about Nickels' bold agenda. Hundreds--perhaps thousands--of hours went into crafting each neighborhood's plan, and neighbors are wedded to them. In South Lake Union, despite a neighborhood plan calling for sticking with the maritime history of the community, Nickels favors turning the area into a biotech hub. At Sand Point Magnuson Park in northeast Seattle, neighbors want a quiet, wildlife-dominated park. But Nickels is supporting a plan to illuminate 11 sports fields on the site. And at Northgate, neighbors have spent years trying to shape development of the mall. So they weren't happy when Nickels stepped in last year to set aside neighborhood guidelines and let the mall begin redeveloping with less community oversight. Finally, in Ballard, bowl opponents cite their "passive" park plan as the reason to tear down the incongruent skate bowl. Nickels obviously favors a multi-use park, for active users and those who just want to sit in the sun.
Whether he's siding with skateboarders or biotech developers, Nickels' philosophy is consistent: While neighborhood plans are valuable (they dictate growth management for "urban centers," outline amenities like parks, and offer suggestions for improving transit), they aren't gospel, and they certainly shouldn't be static, the mayor says. In the past, folks crying "It's not in the plan!" were able to squash new ideas that conflicted with neighborhood plans, but that doesn't fly with the Nickels administration. Indeed, the plans should be amendable, and flexible enough to allow amenities that weren't envisioned a few years ago. "You have to admit it," Northgate property manager Vincent Mullally says in support of Nickels' plans to expand Northgate Mall. "That place was an antique." When the South Lake Union biotech agenda was first generating controversy last year, Deputy Mayor Tim Ceis declared that just because something is absent from the neighborhood plan, it doesn't mean it's a bad idea. Back then, he was referring to ideas coming from Paul Allen's Vulcan. Now, the mayor's support for an unplanned idea in Ballard--generated by an unforeseen community constituency--proves that the same holds true around the city, whether smart ideas come from skateboarders or from mall developers.
Skateboarder Johnston agrees. "What doesn't make sense is to stick to a plan because it exists," he says. "It's not about how long it took, it's about what it says. Just because they worked on [the park plan] for seven years doesn't make it good, it just makes it old."
