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Proposed skate park now has its wheels
City opts to add project to its next fiscal budget
By Daniel Hindin
Sunnyvale's City Council voted last week to include a new skate park in the city's 2001-02 fiscal budget. The park would be completed by summer of 2002.
Sunnyvale's Director of Parks and Recreation Robert Walker noted that Sunnyvale youths currently skate under freeways and overpasses--dangerous areas for kids. Council member Fred Fowler says that he has witnessed many children using rickety-looking homemade ramps to perform tricks at Lakewood Park.
Because of the dangerous conditions that Sunnyvale youth's are skating in, and because the idea of a skate park was first brought up as a study issue more than three years ago, some city council members requested that the park be hurried through and added to this year's budget.
Council members Jim Roberts and Julia Miller and Mayor Pat Vorreiter expressed support of the motion to speed the process but they weren't able to convince the rest of the council that a $570,000 budget item could be easily worked into this year's budget at such short notice.
Realizing that the support wasn't there, this motion was given up. In the end, council voted unanimously to stay with the city staff's original recommendation of completion for summer of 2002.
At the meeting, Walker gave an update on the progress of the proposed skate park. Within the definition of 'skate park,' Walker includes skate boards and roller blades--BMX bikes will not be allowed at the park.
"We acknowledge the fact that skateboarding is just as positive a recreation as all of the other recreational sports for which we provide facilities," Walker said.
The park will be built just south of the Little League baseball field at the very southern tip of Fair Oaks Park, located at the triangle of intersections created by Fair Oaks Avenue, Maude Avenue, and Wolfe Road.
Walker says that construction of the 18,500-square-foot park, designed by the Biels Group architectural firm will cost $570,000, but will only cost about $6,000 per year in maintenance and operations.
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Sunnyvale, California Since 1994
