Another insane park is opening in Arizona on Cotboer 6th. Jason Ryan sent over some great photos of the park, and a story to see how it came to be. Scroll down to check out the story.
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If you haven’t heard by now, I’ll be more than happy to tell you that the city of Glendale, Arizona will be holding a grand opening for their new X-Court on Saturday, October 6th, 2007. It will be an unsupervised, free, concrete, public park that will allow bikes, skateboards, inline skates, and all other un-motorized wheeled use at all times. It’s sick as hell, too, seeing as it was designed by bike riders. Want to see how we got the job done? Trust me, it was hardly a coincidence, dumb luck, or a stroke of fate.
Out of all the cities and towns in Arizona, this whole movement here in Arizona to get free, legal places for bikes to ride began with Glendale first. Riders had attended skatepark meetings here and there, but in addition to being a very small group compared to the skaters and rollerbladers, there was no organization present to unite us. Things got kicked off when the owner of Build-A-Bike held a meeting at her Glendale bike shop in February of 2002. She had received a good response from her councilman Phil Lieberman before when she had a problem with the city, so she organized a get-together between bike riders who wanted a legal place to ride, Glendale City Councilman Phil Lieberman, and Mike Gregory, from Glendale Parks and Recreation. Glendale already had a concrete skatepark under construction at that point (Foothills Skatepark,) and the bike riders wanted to let parks and rec know that they didn’t want to be excluded from the park as Scottsdale, Mesa, Phoenix, Chandler, and other Valley cities had done with their respective skateparks up to that point.
That night we didn’t get far with Glendale parks and rec, but bike riders did put our voice on their map. The best thing to come out of the meeting was that Rex Golos, an avid skater, and myself, Jason Ryan, met for the first time. We talked extensively for two hours after the meeting was over, and formed the Concrete Bikepark Alliance that very night in Build-A-Bike’s parking lot.
We began talking to Phil Lieberman and Glendale Parks and Rec officials extensively, but we weren’t getting the response we wanted, so we went to speak to Glendale City Council on July 10th, 2003. About 30 riders and supporters showed up, and Andy Leeland, a Glendale resident, spoke to the council, as did Rex, myself, and a couple other riders. After the meeting, the mayor called us over and tried to chastise us for telling the city council that they would be turning good kids into criminals if they didn’t allow bikes in their new skatepark. Rex pretty much got in the mayor’s face and very firmly stood by our position. It wasn’t a pretty sight, but it netted us Glendale’s undivided attention. The city manager arranged to meet with us within the next couple of weeks. We knew this was big, because in Glendale, the city manager holds the highest-ranking unelected position in the city.
The Foothills skatepark still wasn’t open, and bikes still weren’t going to be allowed, but Glendale already had another skatepark planned, and that’s all we talked about when I and another Bike, Blade and Board Coalition member met with the Glendale city manager and high-level parks and rec officials (we had changed the name of our organization from the Concrete Bikepark Alliance to the Bike, Blade and Board Coalition earlier that year.) They decided to pass surveys out to Glendale bike shops to see how many riders there were and what kind of park they would like to have. Things were coming along slowly, but we at the 3BC decided it was important to keep pressure on Glendale, so we began planning a protest/rally at the grand opening of the Foothills skatepark.
A couple months later in August, 2003, we were notified that the first community input meeting for Glendale’s 2nd skatepark, the Glendale X-Court, had been scheduled. When I showed up to the meeting, I was confronted by Officer Mark Mabee, a gang resistance instructor for the city of Glendale’s police department, about our planned protest at the Foothills Skatepark. He had seen our bmx protest/rally plans on my website and thought he’d try to intimidate us into not standing up for our constitutional rights at the grand opening. I politely told him we were bmx riders, not a gang; we were going ahead with our protest/rally, and it would be peaceful and orderly, so he didn’t have anything to worry about.
That meeting went very well for us, as approximately 60 bike riders came out and only about 10 skaters showed up. Through the sheer number of bike riders willing to come to a meeting, Glendale got the message screamed at them that their next skatepark HAD TO ALLOW BIKES. We were really nervous, though, because Glendale had already hired Site Design Group to design the skatepark. The 3BC had been at odds with SDG since we started, because they had always told the cities that they shouldn’t allow bikes in their skateparks, and they wouldn’t warrantee any damage incurred to the facility if bikes were allowed.
A second community input meeting was held on the X-Court’s design, and even though there was the same ratio of bike riders to skaters attending the meeting as at the first meeting, Glendale officials still had not fully made the decision on whether or not to allow bikes in the X-Court. I specifically remember Rex and I going toe to toe with Glendale Parks and Rec Director Warren Smith, presenting him with all the facts and logical arguments as to why bikes needed to be allowed in the X-Court. Even after we had soundly shot down every single reason he had as to why bikes should be banned from the new park, he STILL wanted to meet us for lunch to talk about it more. Rex and I were done, though. We declined to meet with him again, because there was just nothing more to talk about. We had won the debate, he knew it, we knew he knew it, and the only thing to do was to leave him to make the right decision.
Meanwhile, SDG started designing the park around bike rider’s input, seeing as pretty much only bike riders came out to help design it. They took a lot of advice from Andy Leeland and I as to what should go in the park, including a concrete box jump, multiple hips, a sub box, and other more bike-oriented features not commonly found in skateparks. SDG, however, wasn’t the only business that started to change their rigid stance against bikes as a result of our efforts.
Cowtown Skateboards, a prominent Phoenix area skate shop, made their view known shortly after the second community input meeting that bikes should be allowed in the X-Court. The owner of Cowtown had pushed very hard to get Valley cities to build concrete skateparks starting many years back, but had always been against bike riders being allowed in them. At last, they recognized that skaters had plenty of concrete skateparks already, and bike riders needed a free, public place to ride as well.
The X-Court has endured many delays, most of them due to funding problems and the high cost of cement and skatepark construction. In 2006, though, construction finally began.
Some riders out here on the West side of Phoenix are afraid that what happened at Goodyear Skatepark will happen at Glendale’s X-Court. They think that bikes will be kicked out after being allowed for a few weeks or months. That is pretty much completely outside the realm of possibility at this point. Goodyear’s parks and rec director hated the idea of bikes being allowed inside “his” skatepark from the beginning, and he never took one crumb of advice we gave him, whereas Glendale officials actually asked for the input of bike riders, skateboarders and inline skaters.
In May of this year, Glendale parks and rec called a meeting about the X-Court and invited all citizens to participate in an X-Court advisory committee that would meet every 2 weeks until the park opened. A few Glendale citizens, Andy Leeland, his girlfriend Miranda, and I have met with parks and rec officials regularly since May, and they have listened closely to every bit of input we’ve given. Most of what we have recommended has become park policy. Bikes, skateboards, inline skates, and all non-motorized wheeled devices are allowed in the park at all times when open. Bikes will have no stipulations on their setup, except no knurled pegs are allowed. Smooth pegs are just fine.
If you would like more information as to how we got this concrete park opened to all non-motorized users, please visit http://www.psychicflyingmonkey.com/The3BCpage.htm and click on the Glendale link. We are working on some specific guides to getting public places for bmx bike riders to ride that we’ll post on the 3BC page; however, the most important part of the process is putting the work in. Another big part is having older riders or parents of riders lead the charge. Sadly, there is a bias in the bmx media against older riders because most of them wear too many pads, don’t do all the trendy tricks, and have gray balls. The reality is that older riders are vital to getting parks open to bikes. Most 15 year-olds just don’t have the maturity it takes to deal well with parks and rec officials, city councilmen, and newspaper reporters. Hell, most 23 year-olds don’t either. If you’re an older rider that wants places to ride, lead those kids! The younger riders will support you. If you’re a younger rider that wants parks, get those older riders and parents off their collective arses and get them to lead you guys. Go to the meetings, go to protests, go to the newspapers, and don’t stop until you have public places to ride! The system only works if you work the system. In December of last year, we had no legal places to ride in the Phoenix area. By the end of 2008 we’ll have 6 concrete parks that allow bikes here! I’ll hit you back with the story of the Tempe bmx/skatepark when that opens in April. Until then, monkey out!
