The Opportunity of a Skateboard Park

For more than six years, the youth of Northfield have been dreaming of a permanent skateboard park in Northfield. Not just dreaming, but raising funds and attending endless meetings. The entire process, up to April 2012, can be followed on a page I assembled on Northfield.org. It’s been a long and often frustrating process, but one which has finally begun to show signs of a resolution. In early 2012, the Parks and Recreation Advisory Board (PRAB) recommended, and the City Council approved, a temporary skateboard park in Riverside Park, just west of the Village on the Cannon. The PRAB also selected a three member subcommittee (consisting of PRAB members Neil Lutsky, David Hvistendahl, and Grace Clark) to study the issue of a permanent site for a skateboard park, and to make a recommendation to the full board.

On September 13, the PRAB subcommittee held a public meeting to hear from potential neighbors of a permanent skateboard park. Nearly all of the fifty or sixty people in attendance were neighbors of either Riverside or Memorial Parks. Many who spoke expressed concerns about noise, about loss of green space, and about the changes a permanent skatepark might bring to their neighorhoods. Others, notably Jim Finholt and Adriana Estill, spoke eloquently about our parks as inclusive spaces where people of all generations can gather for a variety of activities and coalesce into a real community.

This, for me, is the real question. Do we think of our parks as spaces for building and broadening our community, or simply as extensions of our own backyards, where we are in little danger of meeting people different from ourselves? 

Down at the temporary skateboard park in Riverside Park, it’s not unusual to find parents with young children, just learning to skateboard, mixing with the seasoned teenagers. One mother offered to bring cold drinks for the older skateboarders in exchange for informal lessons for her children. Members of the Skateboard Coalition have picked up trash and taken real pride in their park, and have earned the praise of Village on the Cannon residents for their consistently good behavior.

Over the summer, the PRAB subcommittee has met regularly with representatives of the Skateboard Coalition, as well as with representatives of the Village on the Cannon and the Northfield Eastside Neighborhood Association (NESNA), who represent neighbors of Riverside and Memorial Parks, two potential sites of a permanent skateboard park. The representatives of the Village on the Cannon and NESNA have, of course, been adults—including current and retired Carleton and St. Olaf professors. The PRAB subcommittee includes a Carleton professor and a prominent local attorney. The Skateboard Coalition has been led by a Northfield High School senior, Frank Meyer, who has effectively organized the skateboarders and eloquently represented their interests to the adults in the room.

Frank is regularly joined at weekly Skateboard Coalition meetings, and at meetings with the PRAB, by Spencer Fredrickson, Matt Irwin, Isaiah Suárez, and Dane Holzschuh, all of whom have consistently been patient, articulate, and respectful.

As an informal adult advisor to the Coalition since June, what has impressed me the most about the process has been the commitment and perseverence of young people like these who have taken up the struggle, which began a third of their lifetime ago, to create a permanent skateboard park for the youth of Northfield.  Frank himself is not a skateboarder, but he believes in giving his talents and energies to the service of others. To me, and to others who have worked with him, he has been inspirational.

For the past three months, I’ve watched the youth of the Skateboard Coalition interact with the adults from the PRAB, the Village on the Cannon, and NESNA.  I have seen how seriously and thoughtfully they take their role as representatives of Northfield’s youth. I have never been a skateboarder, and I never imagined that I would be working with skateboarders, but I have been extremely grateful for this opportunity.  That’s what it has been—an opportunity. An opportunity to step outside my comfort zone, to become a part of a larger community, and to work for someone’s interest other than my own.

Wherever the permanent skateboard park ends up being located, it presents exactly this kind of opportunity for all of us.

Rob Hardy is a resident of Northfield's east side and a candidate for the Northfield school board.