I know and I appreciate that this park will be newer and better. I have an eight-year-old boy. So I think it is safe to say we are the target demographic in the city for whom this park is being built.
But ….
The vote and approval of the location took many of us by surprise. Ask my eight-year-old where the park should be. Give him the choice between a grassy field and an existing asphalt surface. The answer is a no-brainer.
I personally always marvel at the grass, how it is greener than any of our school play-yards. It is so fresh. We have enjoyed many games of pick-up soccer,and, when Anders was younger, rolling down the hill over and over, a toddler’s rite of passage.
The alternative, the location, was up near the basketball courts. Closer to the park "supervision" seems much more secure, and somewhat safer. It definitely would be closer to the phone in the hut to call 9-1-1.
It goes without saying that the City Council will ask,”Where has everyone who disagrees been during the last couple months of planning?"
Why complain now. The attention of most active parents, with school-aged children,the target demographic,has really been on the Ladera Heights issue and on teacher salaries.
I feel this one kind of caught many of us by Surprise — since it really was a no-brainer.
Please reconsider. My son certainly does not want a skate park in place of a field when we can have both.
Angela Dyborn, Culver City
Ari’s Response: Although the Lower Park area was Here is encouraging news for you. “I am going to attempt to bring the issue back and have it agendized,” City Councilman Alan Corlin said today. I don’t know of anyone who feels more strongly about getting last week’s decision flipped and placing the skateboard park in the lower portion of Culver City Park. Jeff Cooper, a member of the Parks and Recreation Commission, is another muscular advocate of moving the park to the street-level area. “The issue that was raised at last week’s Council meeting about security really is a non-issue,” Mr. Cooper said two days ago. “Absolutely, unequivocally, the wrong location was chosen.”
Mr. Corlin is passionate in his conviction that the skateboarders must be assigned to the Lower Park. As a member of the Democratic Club, he spoke out publicly at the club near the end of last week’s meeting. “The right answer is so obvious,” Mr. Corlin said. “If there were a class in Politics 101, the first paragraph on the first page would include the following, underlined and in bold letters: ‘When there is a viable alternative, never, never get rid of green space.’”
Interim Police Chief Bill Burck and Recreation Director Bill LaPointe both have walked the disputed space in the days following the City Council’s decision. Jointly, they concluded security was not a problem for the Lower Park.