Sat 4 Mar 2006
According to an article in yesterday’s Austin American-Statesman, the Cedar Park city council voted to site their public skatepark outside of Cedar Park city limits. From the article it sounds as if the site selection process was driven not by the end-users of the facility, but instead by NIMBY residents fearing that a skatepark might attract ‘rowdy teenagers’ to their neighborhood parks.
This is extremely unfortunate. By yeilding to the NIMBYs ("Not In My Back Yard"), these leaders have chosen to marginalize children by declaring Cedar Park’s parks belong to older residents. The site selected for the public skatepark is the Williamson County Regional Park, which is one of those remote sports complexes filled with soccer and baseball fields that are accessible only by car. Usage of the skatepark will be severely impacted by this location. What’s worse, on weekends when soccer tournaments are taking place, there is a fee for parking.
What’s also frustrating about this decision is that Cedar Park is ramping up a public input process to determine the master plan for its Northwest Community Park. These meetings are scheduled for 6:30 p.m. on March 15th and April 3rd at the Public Library. If you are a Cedar Park skater who wants to get a public skatepark in your community, your attendance at these meetings is crucial.
The Real and Antihero teams will demo at Skatepark of Austin this weekend. This time, Tony Trujillo is promised to be in attendance.
March 4th, 2006 at 7:53 am
What is also frustrating about that is the idea that they don’t want to provide an outlet for their “rowdy teenagers”. So instead of having a healthy outlet, these teenagers are left with what? Improvising.
March 4th, 2006 at 8:13 am
I thought people moved to Cedar Park to get away from the city riff raff things like skateboardes. I thought the city motto was 100% NIMBY.
March 4th, 2006 at 9:02 am
last time they promised drehobl at vox, and where was he? ah well, can’t miss the demo.
cedar park is sad in my opinion. if you want to have a vibrant community you must cater to all the demographics of your population. it sounds like the people opposing the skatepark in the cedar park city limits don’t realize its their own children that they fear. its not like your going to have groups of inner city thugs going into the cedar park city limits to skate and along the way commit crime. we are talking about their own citizens.
March 4th, 2006 at 12:30 pm
Man, Cedar Park is pretty lame. And I agree with Matt, they think that a lot of thugs *Which they associate with skaters* are gonna come and rip up the area. They are just close-minded, and they don’t see the real reason we want a park. I dunno, it’s sort of sad. I’ll be at the meeting, if I can.
March 5th, 2006 at 4:35 am
Seriously, they have stereotyped the entire sport! Would they reject a putt-putt course, too? In an age when being Politically Correct is popular, it is amazing how people define it!
March 5th, 2006 at 6:47 pm
This demo was AMAZING! Cody McEntire absolutely stole the show, Nollie Bigspin Heelflipped everything in sight. Nick Dompierre also ripped with huge tricks like a 10+ foot gap to blunt and a huge kickflip late shuvit. Tony and Dennis also ripped everywhere with their unique styles. Oh and you cant forget Big Ernie Torres throwing power tricks all over the course. If you missed it you missed out on a once in a lifetime demo experience.
March 6th, 2006 at 8:52 pm
they should combine the skatepark and the putt-putt course. that would be tight.
March 7th, 2006 at 3:52 am
Robert,
I don’t think that Cedar Park would ever go for such a WILD idea. Can you imagine all of the crazy things those skateboarding putt-putters would do?!@# The old people that exiled the park to begin with would really freak out.