Seattle Center is finally getting a new skatepark. On Monday, August
6, the city council approved plans to replace the Seattle Center
Pavilion—the well-used festival hub at Second Avenue North and
Thomas Street—with a new 8,000-plus-square-foot skate
facility.
Since January 2007, Seattle Center has been without a skatepark.
SeaSk8—the skatepark formerly located in a parking lot just east
of Seattle Center—was bulldozed last January to make way for the
Gates Foundation’s new headquarters. Since then, the Skateboard Park
Advisory Committee (SPAC)—the parks department’s panel set up to
evaluate and recommend skatepark sites—has engaged in complicated
negotiations with representatives from the Seattle Center’s Century 21
Committee, formed by Mayor Greg Nickels to “help chart the course of
Seattle Center for the next 20 years.”
The council’s unanimous approval of the site appears to be a victory
for Seattle’s skate community, who fought a long, hard battle to keep
the new skatepark at Seattle Center. However, this victory actually
represents a political loss, spotlighting the lack of clout that
skaters have in this town. Last week, the council kept the skater’s
preferred Broad Street site off the table, selecting the Thomas Street
site—kowtowing to Seattle Center heavies like the Space Needle
and the Experience Music Project (EMP)—instead of looking out for
the interests of Seattle’s youth. EMP wouldn’t comment about which
sites they opposed, but Space Needle CEO Dean Nelson flatly says, “The
Broad Street Green seems to be the wrong place” for a skatepark.
There are practical implications of the loss too: Skaters got a site
that didn’t meet their requirements. SPAC is concerned that Thomas
Street is too isolated from bus lines and will not receive the same
level of foot traffic to make it an integrated destination point at
Seattle Center. While SPAC member Matt Johnston estimates construction
at Broad Street would have been done in early 2008, the skatepark at
the Thomas Street site, however, won’t be done until 2009.
Additionally, the Thomas Street site will require the demolition of the
Seattle Center Pavilion, which is home to 233 different events every
year. SPAC wanted to avoid displacing other groups at Seattle
Center.
Meanwhile, the Broad Street site met all of SPAC’s criteria for a
new skate site. It was big enough and its surrounding green space would
make it welcoming and accessible to onlookers and families alike.
But big business was against it. According to Johnston, Seattle
Center repeatedly told SPAC that Broad Street was off the table because
the power players at Seattle Center didn’t want a skatepark in their
backyard. “A lot of [us] were scratching [our] heads about why a rock
‘n’ roll museum would reject a counterculture,” he says.
Perhaps it’s because EMP and the Space Needle want the Broad Street
Green to be a “gateway” to Seattle Center. EMP’s parent company Vulcan
would not discuss the issue. SPAC thinks the key players didn’t want
skaters to be part of that gateway. “The whole argument [was that the]
corporate tenants thought it ‘didn’t stage Seattle Center well
enough,'” says Ryan Barth, chair of SPAC. “I think it just goes to show
that people still think skateparks are not aesthetically pleasing
places, and I think they’re wrong. We don’t understand why no one’s
ever gone back and looked at Broad Street.”
City Council member and head of the parks committee, David Della,
kept Broad Street off the table, proposing a smaller site—far
away from EMP and the “gateway to Seattle Center”—which died in
council; skaters then ended up with the Thomas Street site.
Coincidentally, Della received a $400 donation from Vulcan, and in the
last five months, he has also received $400 from Vulcan’s director of
government and community relations and another $300 dollars from
Vulcan’s community relations manager. Della would not comment for this
story.
Seattle isn’t the first city to get bogged down in the politics of
skatepark construction, but comparably sized cities like Denver and
Vancouver, BC, have successfully incorporated skateparks into their
dense downtown areas.
While SPAC agrees the Thomas Street site could work, Johnston says
he’s concerned about the wait for a new skatepark. “They’d have to
demolish the [Pavilion]. It’s a minimum two-year wait at that site.
That’s a long wait when you’re 13.” While Johnston and Barth are glad
to have settled on a site, Johnston says he’s had enough of SeaSk8. “We
have 27 skateparks to build in this city and I’m ready to move on to
the next one,” he says. 
