The Seattle Parks Commission board listened to testimony about a proposed skate area in Lower Woodland Park last Thursday night. Most of that testimony contained two themes; that neighbors were unaware of the proposal, and that the proposal was flawed.

An audience of more than 70 people crowded into a small meeting room at the Parks Department office on Dexter Avenue on Thursday, January 26. More than half of them made public comments after parks' staff presented a recommendation that an 18,000 square foot skate park be built in the southeast corner of the park, directly across from N 54thstreet, bordering Green Lake Way North.

A majority of those comments were from residents of the neighborhood, and were critical of the proposal, saying that the skate park would cause traffic jams and noise pollution. Residents also expressed displeasure at discovering that the skate park was much closer to their homes then they had first understood.

In June 2005, the parks board had voted on and endorsed a location for the proposed skate park located about 200 feet inside Lower Woodland Park, between two athletic fields, next to a dense growth of trees. Members of the Skate Park Advisory Committee, a volunteer group providing skateboarding expertise to the parks department, and Parents for Skate Parks, an advocacy group, voiced concerns about the sequestered location being unsafe for children, and that the amount of shade in the area would keep the area damp, and unsafe for skateboarding.

Sometime after the Parks Board vote, in July or August, the parks staff moved the proposed location approximately 150 feet to the east, against the park border along Green Lake Way. That move provided more visibility and more sunshine for the skate park. But neither the public nor the parks board was informed of the move.

"Everyone we talked to was surprised. It was 100 percent rate in our neighborhood," said Hans Bjordahl, a resident who provided testimony during the hearing. Bjordahl said it required significant "detective work" for him to determine the new location for the park, and multiple requests to the Parks Department.

Susan Golub, who presented the recommendation to the board, acknowledged the change was made without public consultation.

"Our feeling was we could make that shift and alleviate those concerns that [skateboarding groups] had raised. We felt 160 feet from homes was still good mitigation for that park," Golub said.

The proposed park is separated from residences by a double row parking lot and the four lanes of Green Lake Way North, dispersing, it is hoped, noise generated by skateboarders. Residents also claimed light pollution would be an issue, though new lighting is not part of the skate park design. Few residents were mollified by that fact, however. The most popular sentiment from Woodland Park residents was a belief that the parks department was deaf to their concerns, or perhaps even being duplicitous.

"I'll take responsibility for that," Superintendent Ken Bounds said about the controversy over public input.

"Our staff was trying to work with skaters and got caught up in it. There was a point in this process where we [staff] should have said, 'hold on, [moving locations] is a different process," Bounds said.

Kate Martin, a cofounder of Parents For Skate Parks, sympathized with neighbors' unhappiness with the discovery of the new location.

"They got screwed," Martin said.

"What's with the secrets? Go to the neighborhood first, and then go to the designs."

Martin, who lives in Ballard, has been a vocal critic of the parks department's public process.

"I live and breath this project," she said during her testimony. She and Scott Shinn, another co-founder of Parents for Skate Parks, were instrumental in recruiting elected leaders to their cause of building a skate bowl in the Ballard Civic Park after the Parks Department opted to exclude skate feature s from the design.

Though the recommended location is not her first choice, Martin doesn't think the Parks Department should go back to the drawing board.

"This is a neighborhood skate park - this [proposed park] is just a dot on the map," Martin said.

The woodland park facility is part of the City's Skateboard Park Policy, adopted in 2003, which calls for a skate facility in each of the four quadrants of the city. The Woodland Park design includes amenities such as a bowl, a beginner skate area and a spectator area. Golub characterized the 18,000 square foot skate park design as "really big" for Seattle. The skate elements at the Ballard Commons - a single skate bowl - are approximately 4000 square feet in size.

The budget for the project is $850,000, coming from the Parks Capital Improvement Projects Fund. The skate park plan is in final design phase, and is slated for completion in the fall of 2006.

The Parks Board will make a recommendation on the site decision to Superintendent Ken Bounds at their next meeting, Thursday, February 9. The recommendation is not binding on the superintendent, but, as an answer to criticism of the public input process by Woodland Park neighbors, Bounds pointed out that the Parks Board hearing was part of that process.