The Multnomah Villager

Couldn’t make it to the whole meeting, but I did stop into the Gabriel Park Skate Park Community Open House. There was a good-sized group, primarily made up of skaters, who were contributing suggestions and feedback on the design features when I arrived. It seemed a little chaotic, mainly since the group of folks (older folks, not skaters) two tables in front of me insisted on having a completely separate conversation during the entire meeting.

Most of the suggestions were about the finer points of the design of the park, which since I am not a skater, don’t mean a lot to me, but it seems like the main points that came out of the meeting are as follows:

• There is a strong push towards making this a primarily “tranny” park, and only the late arrival of some pre-teen skaters towards the end of the meeting may have saved ANY street features in the design.
• There is concern among some members of the group, and primarily among the aforementioned younger folks, that there be various skill levels accommodated in the design. The current design is not for beginners.
• Many folks seemed to think the current snake run design could stand to have a bit of a curve towards one end.
• More curbs man, more curbs.
• The park eventually will have some sort of a roof or cover on it - perhaps similar to the open cover on the basketball courts at the Multnomah Center.
• The design team is very interested in the comments of skaters and community members, but at this point mostly skaters, since they’re trying to lock the design. There is a link to the comment form below.

Here’s a CAD of the preliminary design. Based on all the feedback given at the meeting, this is certainly subject to change, particularly the balance of tranny to street features and several people suggested ringing the skate park with “rideable” planters, which would help alleviate noise concerns.

Here is a link to the comment form. Comments need to be submitted prior to July 6th.

I’ve posted about this enough that I’m adding a category for skate park posts, since I’m tired of linking them up by hand. Click on the category list to the left to find all my posts related to the skate park, or for those of you reading this on an RSS feed, try this link: All Multnomah Villager posts tagged “skate park”.

The next open house will be on July 31st at 7PM at the Multnomah Center. Tuesday’s meeting was in the auditorium, so check there first.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 28th, 2007 at 8:15 am and is filed under Events, Parks, Skate Park. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.