Marysville meeting kids’ needs with skate park

From now on, older skaters will have to recall the days when getting chased out of local Safeway parking lots or cramming into overcrowded skate parks in Seattle were the only options available to kids in suburbia who wanted to skate.

They’ll have the satisfaction of telling younger kids how things were "back in the old days." As of last Saturday — and after nearly a decade of waiting — Marysville skaters finally have a brand-new, 10,000 square-foot skate park to call their very own.

It’s been a long journey for hundreds of Marysville teenagers, their families, and the members of the Marysville City Council who have consistently supported their efforts over the years. Marysville’s Parks and Recreation department began research on the skate park in 1994.

At every turn, the project was met with a strong element of community opposition — many Marysville residents feared that skaters would be a loud, disrespectful, and even dangerous presence in their neighborhoods. Meanwhile, young skaters had no legally-sanctioned space to skate: public schools outlawed skateboarding in 1994, a measure in 1998 prohibited skateboarding in Comeford Park, and kids too young to drive to Seattle’s skateparks were left to their own devices.

Fortunately, there were also members of the Marysville community who wouldn’t give up. Working tirelessly to make the skate park a reality, the City of Marysville provided a considerable amount of funding for this latest $387,000 park, and the Marysville Noon Rotary, HomeStreet Bank, and Wal-Mart generously lended their financial support. Letters to the editor encouraged the city to work with kids, not against them, to promote a positive youth culture that would empower kids in Marysville to reject drinking, drugs, and violence. Most importantly, Marysville teenagers and their families actively rallied community support by holding raffles and putting together benefit concerts to raise money for their park.

In 1997, there were no skate parks in Snohomish County. Today, there are skate parks in Everett, the Edmonds-Lynnwood area, Stanwood, Snohomish, and now Marysville. Monroe plans to open a new park in October, and parks for Lake Stevens, Mukilteo, Arlington, Mill Creek, and Granite Falls are in the works.

The newest skate park is one more testament to a growing phenomenon in which skating has gained acceptance in suburban communities, and proof that kids and their communities can work together to achieve their goals. We applaud their accomplishment, and encourage other cities to wake up to the benefits of giving kids — all kinds of kids — a safe place to have fun.

Now, if we could just get them to wear their helmets.

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