Skateboarding Timeline: How Silver Spring's Kids Were Let Down [UPDATED]

(Update appears at the end of this post — the last 2 items in the timeline.)

Teens have been speaking up very clearly, and for a very long time, about what they want and need. And yet, all they've gotten so far is broken promises.

In 2005 the county parks department had plans to build a 14,000 square foot skatepark in Fenton Gateway Park. While the 2000 Sector Plan for the Central Business District calls for downtown to have a skatepark, it seems the real impetus for this project came from Lisa Jaeggi and her now-famous No No Skateboarding, the short film shot by her father, Richard Jaeggi, protesting the prohibition of skateboarding by a private company (DTSS), on a public street (Ellsworth Drive.)

But there was no support for the skatepark in Fenton Gateway Park by the surrounding community, and plans were allowed to "quietly die." After that, the county did address the lack of a legal place to skateboard by giving skaters lower Ellsworth, blocking traffic and allowing skateboarding there on weekends.

One day in January 2009, skateboarders showed up at their beloved skate spot on Ellsworth, to find that it no longer existed. Without a word of warning to skaters, the one place in all of downtown where skaters could skate and not get kicked out, was suddenly gone. From then until now skaters in and around the the Central Business District, which is supposed to have a skatepark, have gotten nothing but promises for a new spot (all broken), and harassment from DTSS and various other security guards in the area.

In the 2000 Sector Plan for the CBD, the call for a skatepark acknowledged the popularity of East of Maui, the "interim" skatepark that was once downtown, and also addressed the importance of providing a legitimate skating facility in order to protect the redevelopment areas from being damaged by skaters.

Since 2000, the entire country has seen an explosion of growth in extreme sports, most of all skateboarding, while the numbers for all team sports are down. Skaters for Public Skateparks says the national average of youth that skate is 16%, and of those, 33% are daily skaters. In a ten year study the National Association of Sporting Goods Manufacturers said that among sports that grew by at least 15%, skateboarding beat them all — growing more than 74%.

Today, skateboarding is a multi-billion dollar industry.

If we were to reprise Lisa Jaeggi's film today, it would look quite a bit different from No No Skateboarding — the skaters in her video appear to be almost all white, while the vast majority of Silver Spring skaters today are minorities — many of them with limited options for recreation.

Here's a quick timeline of skateboarding-related events in Silver Spring.

• East of Maui closed — The East of Maui Skatepark closed to make way for the downtown redevelopment. It's owner Dave Loop told me it was always meant to be "interim" but that he was able to keep it open longer than expected. (Sadly, all of the ramps and equipment were destroyed when the skatepark closed.)

• 2003 Tony Hawk in Silver Spring — Discovery Corporation hosted the largest and most successful event in the history of downtown Silver Spring, featuring skateboarder Tony Hawk.

• 2005 Lisa Jaeggi's No No Skateboarding — Lisa Jaeggi stages and films a skate-protest on Ellsworth Drive in Downtown Silver Spring, to protest the prohibition of skateboarding by a private company on a public street. Along with his daughter, Richard Jaeggi, who shot the film, promotes it at various events and community meetings, using it to convince community leaders of the need for a downtown skatepark.

• March 2005 Youth not discussed — In a Citizens Advisory Board meeting, Impact Silver Spring's leader Frankie Blackburn said "I was on the Redevelopment Committee and we never once discussed incorporating youth in downtown."

• 2005 Skatepark plans for Fenton Gateway Park — Park & Planning drew up plans for a downtown skatepark, a 14,000 square foot facility to be built in Fenton Gateway Park. The community fought it and the plans died.

• 2005 Park & Planning say Woodside too small — Park & Planning explain why they focused on Fenton over other properties, i.e., Woodside was considered too small for a skatepark.

• 2006 Silver Spring skateboarder killed — 44 year old Bob Wooldrige was hit by a car and killed while skateboarding on a Silver Spring neighborhood street.

• 2006 Lower Ellsworth opens to skaters — The county started blocking traffic for skateboarders on the lower portion of Ellsworth Drive on weekends — apparently to give skaters something after plans for the skatepark in Fenton Gateway Park died.

• 2007 Lisa Jaeggi's new film — Lisa Jaeggi's 2005 skate-protest was included in a new film, Silver Spring Town and included in Gandhi Brigade's What's Your Story?, a collection of short films focused on giving youth a voice in the community. This series further highlighted the desire of local teens to have a community skatepark — as teens themselves speak out about their need.

• January 2009 Lower Ellsworth closed to skaters — The management of DTSS and the Silver Spring Regional Office stopped blocking traffic for skaters, closing lower Ellsworth as a skating spot — the only legal skateboarding spot in downtown Silver Spring. Gary Stith told me the reason for ending skateboarding on Ellsworth was because "businesses complained."

• January 2009 Promise of a new skate spot — Shortly after Ellsworth was closed to skateboarders — I was told by Gary Stith that he was trying to get us a new skate spot in an area behind Whole Foods, and that we were likely to have that within a couple of weeks. Never happened.

• January 2009 Seeking support from Richard Jaeggi — I called Richard Jaeggi asking for help to get skating back on Ellsworth, or an alternative location. Richard told me he was too busy planning the March 7th Mixed Unity concert, and that was all he could focus on. (He told me he had tried to bring skaters into Mixed Unity but failed, and asked me to bring them in. But I attended a few meetings and after the first, I told him I didn't think they'd be interested since all I saw was concert planning. The skaters just wanted a place to skate.)

• February 2009 DTSS gives us, then takes back skate spot — I was told by Lillian Buie, DTSS Guest Relations Director, that we could have the alley beside the DTSS security office. She took me to the alley to show me the area. We WERE allowed to skate there...for all of two weeks, before it was taken away and they started kicking us out.

• May 2009 Another supposed skate spot — We were told by Jennifer Nettles, Property Manager of DTSS, that she was working on getting us the pavement between Whole Foods and Hollywood Video. Never happened.

• May 2009 Skateboarding event that never happened — AFI asked DTSS to host a skateboarding event, to promote a skateboarding movie AFI planned to screen. Never happened. (After a 3-month fiasco of trying to help DTSS plan this thing, with the date being changed from June 21st, to July 21st, to August 21st, we were finally offered such a low-budget tired-sounding event that no one would have bothered to come.)

• July 2009 A supposed skatepark on library property — We were supposedly on track to get a skatepark in the space the library currently sits on, once that's torn down. Not gonna happen.

• July 2009 No response from Citizens Advisory Committee — Following DTSS Property Manager's request, Lillian Buie made an email introduction with me and a Citizens Advisory Board member, identifying me as someone who was very involved with local skaters and who knows a lot about their needs. I sent 3 long emails to that Advisory Board member — not one of them got a response.

• October 2009 Skaters find out about Woodside plans — Former Silver Spring skater Mike Fitzgerald, who came with me to the first meeting with DTSS on the planned skateboarding event, (and who now lives in West Virginia), informed me of the planned skate spot for Woodside Urban Park. I immediately set up a Facebook Group and started organizing skaters to support it.

• November 4th, 2009 Woodside Skate Spot meeting — We were supposedly going to have a tiny "skate spot" (3,000 square feet) in Woodside Park this January. We were asked to support it. We did support it, asking skaters to send supportive emails, and asking skaters to attend the meeting (30 did), and I even attended a 'pre-meeting' that I initiated on November 4th, the day of the community meeting. Construction on that skate spot has now been delayed, and I'm not convinced it's actually going to be built.

• November 24, 2009 A sensible solution — In the midst of all of these dropped balls and broken promises, blogger Dan Reed of Just Up The Pike, makes the first sensible, and logical recommendation to resolve these issues — give the skaters an entire floor of the Wayne Avenue garage. The skaters love this idea and the county needs to get behind it — for the health and wellbeing of our children, and to preserve property.

• November 25, 2009 SPS weighs in — In a comment posted to Dan's blog, Skaters for Public Skateparks Publishing Director Peter Whitley, thanks Dan for using the SPS data exactly as it was meant to be used, and points out that while "budget-minded bureaucrats" may see skate spots as "miniature skateparks", they are not, and are only meant to augment community skateparks and not to replace them.

Foolishness

It was foolishness, even when viewed from a purely business perspective, to kick skateboarders out of lower Ellsworth Drive. And I wonder what that decision has cost this area, purely in terms of dollars and cents.

The Discovery ledge, built with handmade Jerusalem marble, in perfect condition before skaters were kicked off of Ellsworth, was trashed. How much did it cost to rebuild that? It now has big, ugly bumps on it — anti-skating devices, I'm sure. And how much other property was trashed after we lost Ellsworth?

In Baltimore, skaters walked around the city taking pictures of all of the skateboard-related damage, which city leaders later estimated to have cost about $1 million. That convinced the city the most cost-effective thing to do would be to just go ahead and build a real skate park.

One week after Ellsworth was shut down, I spoke with Gary Stith who was then head of the Silver Spring Regional Office. He told me he was trying to identify a new location for skaters, and that within two weeks from that point we were likely to have a new spot. It's almost a year later. No new spot.

And it's 5 years later than the day Silver Spring skater Lisa Jaeggi organized a skate-protest, encouraging skaters to take back Ellsworth, since it is, after all, public space.

While the cost of skateboard-related property damage is likely very high, the real cost to this town has nothing to do with money, and it has everything to do with losing the trust of so many kids in this community, and them losing the feeling of being a part of this community, when something so incredibly important to them was taken away without a second thought.

We are now told we'll be getting a "skate spot" in Woodside Park. But the Woodside Civic Association isn't happy with the information they've been given and they're asking for construction to be delayed until the Spring of 2010. That means if we do get it, we'll have yet another summer with no legal place to skate. And if it is built, it will only be a 3,000 square foot park.

At the meeting on November 4th a rep from the Parks Department told us their intention was to design the smallest park possible, in order to minimize the impact on the community. They said that they asked a skatepark company how small they could go, and still have a viable park.

So we're looking at the possibility of getting a tiny "skate spot" (not an actual skatepark), when there are approximately 100 skateboarders who skate in Silver Spring. And since skateboarding is the fastest growing sport in America, as teens are trending away from team sports and towards action sports, that number is likely to grow significantly.

According to Skaters for Public Skateparks, the organization for skatepark-related data, 1,500 square feet of skatepark space can support 10 skaters. That means the planned Woodside Skate Spot can be expected to support no more than 20 skaters. And I can tell you from lots of experience skating a 6,500 square foot park, that 20 skaters in a 3,000 square foot park will be seriously pushing it.

So if the intention is to give even half of the local skaters a place to skate — the Woodside Skate Spot isn't going to do that.

And each day that we continue this game of cat and mouse, of 'chase the skaters' from one illegal spot to the next, it costs this town more — more money because of property damage, and in more kids in our community feeling alienated and marginalized, and feeling like the adults in this community do not care about their needs.

Was the decision to shut down Ellsworth really worth all that?

Who Knew? Richard Jaeggi Proved My Point In 2005

In September 2005, Richard Jaeggi who is currently leader of Gandhi Brigade and an adult supervisor of Mixed Unity, wrote an article for the Takoma Voice in his column Big Acorn...addressing exactly the same issue Silver Spring skateboarders are struggling with today.

Richard's kids all skateboard, and in this article he explains how his daughter Lisa researched the issues and found this:

"In her research my daughter discovered that the eastern portion of Ellsworth Drive, the part in front of City Place, was not covered by the lease agreement. One third of the street remained public and was presumably governed by the public laws of Montgomery County — and, it seemed, still subject to the First Amendment. Despite their policy, security guards had no jurisdiction to enforce PFA rules on a public street."

Now I don't know what the managers of DTSS have been telling their security staff because they sure seem to think they DO have the right to restrict peoples' rights on ALL of Ellsworth Drive in DTSS. Somebody needs to send them a memo because I and virtually every skater I know has been harassed and chased off of Ellsworth Drive for skating.

I've been skateboarding for a year now and the harassment started even before DTSS and the Silver Spring Regional Office stopped allowing skateboarding on the lower part of Ellsworth — where DTSS security clearly has no jurisdiction and no right to complain about anything.

But even on the main part of Ellsworth, Richard's kids, Lisa, Daniel, and Isaac, staged a skate-protest way back in 2005, and the security guards who had been aggressively chasing out skateboarders, did absolutely nothing. Why? Because they have no legal right to:

"Lisa and my sons, Daniel and Isaac, concocted a plan to test this theory. On Saturday morning skateboarders began to converge on our house. After feeding them pancakes and orange juice, Lisa gathered the motley crew of about fifteen teens in a circle on the driveway for a pep talk. She told them that this was about their right to stand up and contest something that was unfair. She made them promise to maintain discipline: to be respectful and to let her do the talking if security guards or police confronted them. In high spirits and ready for anything, they set off on their skateboards for their rendezvous with destiny uncertain how this would all play out.

I had volunteered to be their cameraman so I had an insider-outsider perspective on the day. I taped them as they crossed Fenton from the east; skateboards in hand, they were at the same time giddy, anxious, and determined. When they reached the forbidden Silver Sprung they smoothly dropped their boards on to the street and one-by-one proceeded to skate single file around the perimeter of the road-- being careful to avoid the western part of Ellsworth.

Personal experience had prepared each of them for the worst: a stern reprimand with threats of tougher consequences for future disobedience. Nothing had prepared them for what actually happened. The security guards said nothing and did nothing. Wordlessly they did the slow, determined cop-walk past the growing ranks of skateboarding teens."

The drums of Ellsworth — A protest becomes a party

Oh, and About Taking Ellsworth Away From Skaters...

How is it that a PRIVATE company, the Downtown Silver Spring Shopping District, gets to control a PUBLIC street, and tell skateboarders they can't skate there?

When skaters were allowed to skate the lower part of Ellsworth Drive (below Fenton Street), we ONLY skated in the street -- on the pavement, which is absolutely not owned by DTSS. That's Montgomery County property, and I don't understand how a for-profit company is allowed to make decisions about how it's used.

Some years ago a Silver Spring skater named Lisa Jaeggi staged a skate-protest to address just this issue. To my knowledge, no one has ever answered the questions she asked back then -- why is a private company telling members of the community what to do on public property?