Allan Appel Photo
Skate park promoters Steven Roberts and J. Joseph.
Two young men with a skateboard and $50,000 in private committed funds in hand walk into a community meeting and propose to build a skate facility in a beloved park.
What could happen?
Interest, of course — but also an unexpected fusillade of skepticism and opposition.
Little kid playground at Scantlebury Park
That was the scene Thursday night at Trinity Temple Church on Dixwell and Henry streets at a meeting convened by Dixwell Alder Jeannette Morrison.
J. Joseph, who just graduated from Yale and who now works for the evolving Stephen A. Schwarzman Center at Yale, and Steven Roberts, who teaches skateboarding in a program at Stetson Library called “Push to Start,” are both skateboard aficionados.
They met enjoying the sport as well as the cross-cultural cross-class camaraderie that unfolds at the recently opened Edgewood Park Skate Park.
That is the only skate park in the city . Many of the kids in Roberts’ program come from Newhallville and Dixwell. Joseph and Roberts applied for a grant from the Could Be Fund of the Elm City Innovation Collective (ECIC) to establish a similar skatepark closer to those neighborhoods.
They were successful, to the tune of $25,000. The grant required a match.
Step in Garth Ross. For 20 years Ross was the director of community engagement at the Kennedy Center in the nation’s capital. Now he has taken a job running the Schwarzman Center, whose aim is not only to build cozy new facilities for Yale students but also to support barrier-breaking grassroots programs outside of the campus .
Skateboarding, Roberts, Ross, and Joseph argued, also promotes music, as in hip hop, the visual arts and culture. It promotes character-building values like perseverance, team work, and design and even architectural problem-solving: As in, how am I going to get my board over that pyramid?
Skateboarding programs accomplished those goals in D.C., said Ross. He therefore matched the grant. Both Ross and ECIC chief Michael Harris were in attendance at Thursday night’s community meeting along with city parks chief Becky Bombero, along with a dozen neighbors.
Roberts and Joseph told the group their plan would be great for Scantlebury Park. Alder Jeannette Morrison ask neighbors to fill out surveys on how much they wanted a skate park and what other activities the park needs.
Before the surveys were handed out, neighbors said: Hold your horses. And your money.
“We don’t think a skate park is for us,” said E. Lindsey Ruminski, a longtime resident in the area around the park. “It’s great for Yale, but not for our kids. Yale] took over,” she said.
Other neighbors said the money would go a long way for park repairs. Roxanne Condon, one of the movers and shakers to establish Scantlebury, cited the need for a degrading pad under the little kids playground area on the west area of the park.
Another suggestion: establish pickle ball court first.
And what about all the parking hassles Scantlebury is dealing with already? You and Yale, neighbors said to the young men and to Morrison and Bombero, are presenting this as a fait accomplis, or at least, as one listener put it, a game that’s in the ninth inning.
Longtime Admiral Street resident E. Lindsey Ruminski: How about soccer?
“No,” said Morrison. “This is step one, the beginning, or continuing of a visioning process for the park.”
She and Bombero also pointed out that Scantlebury Park, which was initially funded by a half-million-dollar grant from Yale, has a dedicated fund for other infrastructure building and improvements. The proposed skate park would not take away from other projects.
That fund paid for a new splash pad two years ago. Other projects have been put on hold in part because the city’s beloved landscape architect, David Moser, died. The city hasn’t yet filled that position, Bombero reported.
Joseph said if the skate park happens, it well might be named for Moser, who designed the Edgewood facility, the last project before his death.
Over the years Yale augmented the fund dedicated to Scantlebury through fees paid for using part of the park as a staging area for some of the university’s new construction. That dedicated fund is growing, and with good interest, Bombero added.
None of that assuaged neighbors’ concerns that the skatepark is being foisted on them by Yale and a ready bunch of cash.
Longtime neighbors Jerry Turek, Roxanne Robinson Condon, and Brauna Gorin asked where the promised park improvements are.
So money was not the issue in the nearly two-hour discussion that ensued, but the uses to which it’s put, and who has the ultimate say.
An Africa-American Activity?
Skateboarder Lonnie Huckaby and Ross before the meeting.
Roberts said skateboarding is growing fast in the African-American community, as opposed to, say, baseball. “It’s rising globally,” he said, and will be an Olympic sport in 2020. Roberts also pointed to the first skate shop in the city, owned by Lou Cox, an African-American entrepreneur and a role model for Roberts and others.
“It could have an economic benefit as well,” Roberts asserted. “People will travel from all over to a good park.”
Neighbors like Ruminski were not convinced. “I’m tired of our boys playing only basketball and football,” she conceded. But she said skateboarding is too dangerous. Yes, the kids need exercise, to be outside, but crime keeps them inside, she said.
Morrison politely but strongly begged to differ.
“What appeals to me is the stage,” she said, referring to a raised platform proposed for one end of the park. It would be a permanent performance space for concerts and all kinds of other activities, for which the city now has to shlep over its mobile stage.
“The city would do the infrastructure,” Bombero added, creating a permanent feature, much like the one at DeGale Field off of Goffe Street. In the long run, that would be much less expensive than the portable units.
“Skateboarding is not a silo-ed activity,” Roberts added.
“Why wouldn’t you want your kid skating with the next Picasso?” he asked rhetorically.
“One of the beauties of Scantlebury is that it’s grassroots. This feels like it’s being jammed at us,” said Roxanne Condon.
Parking
Neighbors Turek and Condon.
“You guys are taking this the wrong way,” Morrison replied. “This is not a done deal. This is step one.”
Discussions ensued about liability, littering, and then, inevitably, parking. Of which there is not enough.
Neighbors present expressed concern that people coming to the park will park on other streets, taking their spaces. They envisioned car accidents the nearby New Haven Reads, the Rose Center, Yale’s Health Center also attract people, often hurriedly, coming and going.
Roberts replied that most skateboarders do not drive their cars into the park.
After taking in the long discussion, Yale Police Officer Martin Parker, whose beat is community engagement, came down on the side of the skate park — if, after surveys and a community vote, the majority goes for it.
He offered a caveat: “Whatever we do, we definitely need to address parking.” With all the activities in the area already, he said, “It’s only a matter of time” before a car hits a kid.
“There’s a lot of space there, and we have a pot of money to do other improvements,” said Bombero.
Just beyond the Farmington Canal Train, in the northeast quadrant, an empty field where the park might be situated.
“Yes/ our park is popular,” said Morrison, proudly.
Ruminski, who had been holding her fire, said; “The city gives out permits to all kinds of people. We can’t even get to our own park.”
“I can’t deny people using the park, but I always require a parking plan,” Bombero parried.
After more than two hours,
“I’m not going to bring this to the management team until we get ourselves together,” she declared.
The young skateboarders were sobered but not daunted by the reception they had received.
“It didn’t go as smoothly as expected, but we like the input and we remain optimistic,” said Joseph.