Funding Approved for Skateboard Park

After more than a year of searching for a site where they can legally perform their acrobatic stunts, Hermosa Beach skateboarders are poised to get one of the first publicly funded skateboard parks in Los Angeles County.

The Hermosa Beach City Council has unanimously approved a plan to spend more than $240,000 to create a 7,000-square-foot skateboard park on a back lot at the city’s Community Center within the next year. Glendale officials recently completed a conceptual design for a 10,000-square-foot skate site scheduled to open by summer in their city.

“We feel collectively as a council that skateboarding is as much a part of Hermosa as surfing,” said Councilman Robert “Burgie” Benz. “Previous councils made it illegal for kids to skateboard and we feel it’s time to provide them with a place to do it.”

Hermosa Beach’s skateboard park, first called for by hundreds of teenage enthusiasts more than a year ago, will result in the city spending about $70,000 to build ramps, handrails and a concrete surface and about $180,000 to relocate tennis courts now on the site.

Skateboarders said they were thrilled that their effort had paid off.

“We’re pretty excited that we’re finally going to have a place to go,” said Mike Sliff, 15, who launched the campaign to get a skateboard park along with his friend Kelly Ress. “A place where they are going to say, ‘Skaters welcome,’ instead of a place where we get kicked out.”