City of Lodi considering alternatives to outdated skate park

Jun. 23—The Lodi City Council will consider options to provide skateboarders with a better facility at its July 19 meeting.

Lodi's Parks, Recreation and Cultural Services director Christina Jaromay presented skate park options to the council during its Wednesday night meeting, and said the city could either repair the existing facility at Kofu Park, replace it with a new one, or build a new structure at a completely new location.

For the last several months, members of Lodi's skating community have attended several council meetings urging staff to repair or replace the Kofu Park amenity.

The skate park was constructed in 2002 by Los Angeles-based design firm Spohn Ranch. It is currently a 20,000-square-foot park with a concrete base and wooden ramps, built at a cost of $540,000.

Jaromay said the park was only meant to last 10 years, and because it's in a storm basin, the wooden ramps are susceptible to weather, like the heavy rains the city experienced earlier this year.

"The ramps are really in disrepair," she said. "We've tried to repair them. We spend a couple thousand dollars ordering materials and try to line the ramps back up, but because the ramps are in a storm basin, the material is susceptible to constricting and retracting, so when we go to line up (bolt holes), we can't can't get them in the same bolts."

If the city were to replace the existing ramps with concrete ones, which Jaromay said is now industry standard, repairs would be minimal.

Jaromay said the skate park could undergo rehabilitation at a cost of $95,000, which requires a professional company to perform repairs.

Work would entail replacing 33 Skatelite surfaces as well as the the high-density polyethylene plastic underlayment material currently at the park, and would allow the city to keep the existing facility open in safe condition while planning for a new concrete skate park. An additional $10,000 annually could fund portable restrooms and handwashing stations, she said.

A second option would be to build a new concrete park at the Kofu site, which would include the demolition of the existing ramps and pads and utilities. A Portland Loo — a stainless steel structure with an open-air top and bottom, but no sinks or mirrors — would be provided as well. The cost for this option is more than $2.5 million.

The city could also build a new 20,000-square-foot concrete park in two phases at a city-owned location to be determined.

The first phase would include planning efforts, a parking lot, fencing, demolition, utilities and construction, while the second phase would include sports lighting, restrooms, and pump track programming and fencing. This option would cost more than $5 million.

A final option would be a hybrid project in three phases, the first of which includes hiring a professional skate park company to repair the current infrastructure to ensure the skate park is safe and remains open.

The second phase would consist of adding new concrete features and the third phase would complete the project with full replacement of the Skatelite ramps to concrete features as well as a long-term solution to restrooms. This option would cost the city about $2.8 million, according to Wednesday's agenda.

Jaromay said the city could look at grants to help fund any skate park project, specifically the Skatepark Project Grants program, formerly known as the Tony Hawk Foundation.

The program offers as much as $300,000 in grants, however, an average award is typically $10,000.

There are other requirements for receiving grants as well, Jaromay said.

Only concrete parks are funded, and the project must have a grassroots funding component.

A city's median household income must not be greater than the state median and the project must have a preliminary design. Skate parks must not have entrance fees and access must not be limited.

Pat Byron is a member of the skateboarding community who has spoken at many council meetings over the past year.

He and his fellow skaters said rehabilitating the skatepark for $95,000 wouldn't make the site any more usable than it already is, and suggested DeBenedetti Park as a location for a brand new facility.

Byron added the city could then convert the existing site at Kofu into a plaza-style skate park, adding the whole project would be less expensive than repairing the existing facility.

"Lathrop had a skate park a lot like ours," he said. "What they did is they chose to move forward with a new park in a new location, installed it in an area where there was already some park development happening so they could piggy-back a skate park with an existing parking lot and infrastructure, bathrooms, all that kind of stuff already being installed there."

City manager Steve Schwabauer said Byron had a good idea, but DeBenedetti was a "Master Plan" park that went through a public design process, with public input to create it.

"So if you were to change the plans for DeBenedetti Park, you would be changing a very large part of the public input," he said. "It would be as if you get to the end of building a skatepark and somebody comes up with another idea. you changed it after all that input. I think you'd have some frustration from residents who participated in that public process."

Vice Mayor Lisa Craig she didn't want to see the skatepark become another Candy Cane Park, which fell into such disrepair that it was permanently closed until the proper improvements were made.

"As much as I understand the desire to save those funds and put them toward another park," she said. "We don't have the funds available. There are a lot of other priorities and we need to do something as an interim step."