For Immediate Release
Carlsbad Skatepark Update 5-20-05
The Party’s Over
5/20/05 (Carlsbad, CA) After a year of demonstrations and dialogue with all the related parties, the Save Carlsbad Skatepark coalition has seen their efforts to save the historic site ultimately fail. The site has been graded and the world’s first skatepark, which lie intact beneath a skin of dirt for more than two decades, has been destroyed forever.
The skatepark property is part of a 165-acre redevelopment project in eastern Carlsbad, California, and with San Diego County’s rapid growth in the past decade, the once isolated parcel on which the skatepark sat became central to the Carlsbad industrial zone. All 165 acres is being developed as a business park, and though the skatepark property was at the far eastern edge, the land proved too valuable for the coalition of skaters and skate-industry representatives to save.
The nearly 6-million-dollar price tag for the land alone made efforts to save the park difficult, but the unknown costs of excavation and refurbishing the site further complicated fundraising. The final plan was to request that the City of Carlsbad identify an appropriate piece of City property that could be traded for the skatepark site, with the Save Carlsbad Skatepark coalition promising to raise the funds necessary for site improvement.
Since the site would ultimately become a City park, and an international attraction, this seemed to be a fair division of responsibility. Ultimately, the City of Carlsbad could not identify a suitable parcel to offer the developer, and the site was graded and the historic skatepark unearthed and destroyed.
Carlsbad Skatepark, which operated between 1976 and 1979 (and which in the late 1980s briefly hosted Mike McGill’s ramp skatepark on the site), is gone forever. Hopefully this Web site will serve as a suitable memorial to this piece of skateboarding’s history. Carlsbad Skatepark was unprecedented, but served as a model for the skatepark phenomenon that continues to this day.
