ON VETERANS’ DAY, a dozen young guys freed from school for the holiday politely lined up around a patch of dirt where SE Brooklyn hits the Union Pacific rail line, watching each other grind on the city’s newest mini skatepark.
The new Brooklyn Street Skate Spot isn’t on the city’s 2005 “Skatepark Master Plan”—a map of 19 skateparks planned across Portland. That’s because neighbors and skate supporters from all over the city built the park themselves, DIY-style, pouring the concrete in July without a permit.
But with the city strapped for cash, DIY infrastructure may be the best way to go when it comes to realizing the aims of that plan—and, in this case, transforming a neighborhood eyesore into a resource.
The “gnarly piece of land” that’s now home to the Brooklyn Street Skate Spot was a derelict patch of dirt where people used to sleep, drink, and shoot up under a barbed wire-covered pedestrian bridge that crosses the train tracks, says neighbor and park mastermind Colin Sharp. Technically, the land is a city-owned right of way that Union Pacific is supposed to be responsible for maintaining.
Sharp, 38, lives up the street and is a long-time skater who had been eyeing the spot for years before finally deciding to call the city last summer about turning it into a skatepark. But finding public money and working out the relationship between the city and the railroad proved complex. Instead, Sharp and friends got tacit city approval—in the form of nonprofit sponsorship from neighborhood group Southeast Uplift—and raised over $2,000 in donations and started pouring cement. When they scraped off the top layer of dirt at the spot, Sharp says his volunteer crew pulled out 30 needles.
These days on the site, a shallow, curved concrete bowl no more than 10 feet across encircles a comically small pine tree. Rules for respecting the park and neighbors are hung on the side of the metal pedestrian bridge.
Not everyone was happy with the new skatepark popping up. Mike Nahorney, who has owned Advance Electric Motors just up the block for 23 years, was so worried about liability issues if he bought the lot bordering the park that he contacted Portland Police Officer Robert Pickett. Nahorney and Sharp met with Officer Pickett for mediation, and Nahorney now says he’s not against the park, but is upset they didn’t go through “proper channels” before building in the public right of way.
Portland has a proud tradition of non-permitted skateparks—the illegally built Burnside Skatepark celebrated its 20th anniversary on Halloween. But neither the Burnside park nor Brooklyn Skate Spot are considered permanent structures; despite their concrete nature, the city could legally tear them down at any time. And the new park’s days may truly be finite: TriMet’s current design for the planned Milwaukie light-rail line would annihilate the Brooklyn Skate Spot in about 2014, if it goes through as planned.
Mark Conahan is one of the activists who helped push through the Skatepark Master Plan, which sets up a formal process for building new parks. But he also says working outside the system to build neighborhood skate spots is a great idea. “It’s so much more complicated doing it through the city and having the city raise the money, so in that way we’re very much behind the grassroots idea,” says Conahan, whose group Skaters for Portland Skateparks donated $1,000 to the Brooklyn project.
Nineteen-year-old Rocco Caravelli woke up at 8 am to beat the crowd at the new spot. He prefers the minuscule neighborhood park to the more spacious but intimidating Burnside. “The city doesn’t seem like it has a lot of money, so if there’s sanctioned skate spots, that’s great,” says Caravelli. “Skateboarders want to conquer all terrain.”
hella
Portland has a longstanding tradition of DIY-everything. In NE Portland at 16th and Tillamook, there is a traffic diverter. What most people don’t know is that the neighbors put one there illegally decades ago, and kept putting in DIY diverters until the city built an official one. There are dozens of examples of citizen-initiated projects, many of which became “official” later.
“Not everyone was happy with the new skatepark popping up. Mike Nahorney, who has owned Advance Electric Motors just up the block for 23 years, was so worried about liability issues if he bought the lot bordering the park that he contacted Portland Police Officer Robert Pickett.”
This is bad prose written awkwardly. None of the putative controversy is sourced with quotes or put into context. Particularly relevant questions include 1) whether Nahorney was already planning on buying the lot 2) how other illegal skate parks have affected their neighbors 3) how many other neighbors have approached city officials with positive or negative responses. The deliberately vague phrasing strongly imply a reporter trying to stretch a conversation into a conflict.
Here is the same paragraph without unverified statements:
“One local business owner was unhappy with the construction. Mike Nahorney, owner of the nearby Advance Electric Motors, contacted Portland Police Officer Robert Pickett about liability issues. Nahorney and Sharp met with Officer Pickett for mediation; Nahorney now says he’s not against the park but was upset that Sharp didn’t go through ‘proper channels’ before building in the public right of way.”
Oh my goodness it’s boring there’s very little information in there!
Sort of sad really: I wonder if anyone pointed out that this spot will probably get demolished as part of the MAX orange line, or if the people who did this know about the youth who got hit by a train a few years back just the other side of Powell. I’m all for DIY, but I could point to about 10 better empty lots in the area (though the owners may be more inclined to litigiousness than Union Pacific).
On the other hand, Union Pacific is about as far from a good neighbor as you can get so there’s not much they could do to make the area uglier. I have thought, on several occasions, about trying to start a fund to buy up some local abandoned lots and turn them into parks, but it’s ultimately hard to justify the time, cost and risk. Good for them for stepping up… but next time look at the city’s 10 year plan first.
@phizzi: put up or shut up.