Whose skate park is it anyway?

As site plans jell, turf war brews between BMXers, skateboarders

By Jennifer Anderson

The Portland Tribune, Mar 22, 2005, Updated Oct 30, 2009

Beneath the rumble of highway traffic, produce trucks and other industrial noise that surrounds the Burnside Skatepark, the skaters and riders are perfectly silent.

As fluid as the tide, the handful of BMX riders and skaters who arrive as early as 8 a.m. stand on deck and wait for another to finish before taking their 30-second rides. By late morning or early afternoon, the BMX riders follow the park’s unspoken rule: leave when more skaters arrive.

“Bikers are aware skaters built it; it’s their spot,” said 29-year-old Brandon Dryer, a mountain biker who began riding BMX bikes a year ago. “Here it’s just something you know, or you figure it out pretty quick when the skaters come and throw you out.”

A number of local skateboarders, however, fear that unspoken rule won’t fare as well at the two new public skate parks slated to be built this fall with funding from the 2002 Portland Parks & Recreation levy.

In fact, Tom Miller and Kent Dahlgren, who lead the two major skateboard advocacy groups in Portland, anticipate a potential turf war if BMX riders share the spots.

“Eternal conflict,” predicts Miller, founder of Skaters for Portland Skateparks and chief of staff to Commissioner Sam Adams. “It’s all about separate facilities. I can ride my bike home, and you can drive your car. That’s cool as long as we each have our respective lanes.”

As the parks siting process for a pair of neighborhood skate parks kicks into high gear, Miller and Dahlgren are leading a push for exclusive skateboard access to the parks.

Their main arguments: BMXers present a danger of collision with skateboarders; boarders have been far more involved in the public skate park process; and national data shows a 13-to-1 ratio of skaters to BMX riders.

They wouldn’t leave the BMXers in the dust, though. Miller has proposed that a portion of the $500,000 in parks levy funds earmarked for skate parks be turned over to a separate facility for BMX riders.

“Let’s give the BMX community a site and 10 percent of the cash and say, ‘Knock yourselves out and do whatever you like,’ ” he said.

Bicyclists’ response to the idea is mixed. “That’d be awesome,” says 24-year-old BMX rider Adam Treadwell. “That’s something every biker dreams of is to have their own skate park.”

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