When the city announced several years ago that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation was building its world headquarters east of the Seattle Center, it was obvious the existing SeaSk8 skateboard park on the site had to go.
No problem, the city said. A brand-new one would be built on the Seattle Center campus before or soon after the old one was demolished, officials promised.
The old skateboard facility, the first in the city, was whacked last January, but the soonest a new skateboard park will be online is the spring of 2009, according to the city's latest plan.
There were earlier efforts to find a new place for skateboarders, and the first of them, two years ago, would have put a new facility on Elliott Avenue West next to the county's huge combined sewer overflow building.
That proposal was roundly panned by, among others, Parents for Skateparks, a group that complained the new site was too isolated, was unsafe and lacked amenities such as running water or bathroom facilities.
The proposal was subsequently dropped, which left the Seattle Center scrambling to find a new location on its campus. The skateboard community thought the Broad Street Green would be an ideal location, said Kate Martin, director of Parents for Skateparks.
That was a non-starter, however, because owners of the Space Needle and the Experience Music Project put heavy pressure on the city to take the Broad Street Green off the table, she said. "We're no longer dialoguing with them," Martin said.
Then the city came up with the idea of taking out the DuPen Fountain at the Seattle Center and putting a new skateboard park there. The proposal was condemned in no uncertain terms by the arts community, the DuPen family and city council member Tom Rasmussen.
So the city backed off on that idea and settled on taking out Pavilions A and B southeast of the KeyArena and putting a new skateboard park there. The Century 21 Committee, charging with charting the Seattle Center's future, thought the two pavilion buildings should come down anyway, Martin said.
The Skatepark Advisory Committee (SPAC) had also signed off on the idea, said Seattle spokeswoman Debora Doust. The 15,000-square-foot project was fairly ambitious, and it would have combined both the skateboard park and open green space, she added.
There was a problem, though. A feasibility study found that taking out both pavilion buildings would have cost an additional $2.5 million because utilities such as duct work and electrical connections to the KeyArena would have needed to be replaced, Doust said.
As it was, the city council had to pony up another $800,000 to go with the original $2.1-million allocation for the one-pavilion version, she said.
Seattle Parks and Recreation had been taking the lead in the project, but that duty was handed off to the Seattle Center, said Parks spokeswoman Dewey Potter. "They even transferred the [project] money to the Seattle Center," she added. "We are completely out."
The ball also has been in the city council's court, starting with outgoing city councilmember David Della's Parks, Education, Libraries and Labor Committee. "We knew those structures were under the pavilions," said Dave Namura, Della's chief of staff. But the Seattle Center didn't think the cost to relocate the utilities would be that high, he said.
Still, just using the space of only one pavilion would allow the construction of a new skateboard park that - at 9,800 square feet - will be larger than the old SeaSk8, which only came to 8,900 square feet, Namura noted. By council ordinance, the replacement skateboard park had to be the same size or larger than the old one, he explained.
SPAC chairman Ryan Barth did not respond to an e-mailed request for comment last week, but a meeting Nov. 15 meeting about the new skateboard facililty reportedly drew complaints from both the skater community and organizers who use the pavilion space during various festivals at the Seattle Center.
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