After the City Council heard from youthful skateboarders about the need for lights at the park outside Northside Aztlan Community Center, city staff members were directed to look into what it would take to meet the request.
After all, the skaters pointed out, other sports such as tennis, softball and basketball have lights for night play. Why shouldn’t skateboarding?
Hopes of finding a speedy solution were bolstered when Alberta Development Partners, which owns Foothills Mall, offered lights from the mall’s parking lot to the city for the project.
Alberta is redeveloping the mall on a massive scale and has plenty of materials to recycle.
But the lights its offering are old and not designed to illuminate something like a skateboard park, said Marty Heffernan, executive director of community services.
The light fixtures shine straight down, which could lead to shadowing issues on the skating surface. Poles holding the lights would have to be placed inside the parks’ wide-open bowls and features, putting them in the way of skaters.
Getting power to the park for lights is another issue.
Much of the property around the community center sits atop a plume of underground contamination left over from when the site was home to a gas plant that turned coal into fuel for heating homes and powering lights.
The plant operated from 1904 to about 1926. The city operated a landfill at the site from 1930 to 1960.
There’s a lot of nasty stuff underground with structures in place to keep contaminated groundwater from reaching the nearby Poudre River. Digging on the property is restricted and has to be carefully monitored when it happens.
Trenching a power line from the Aztlan building to the skate park would be expensive, Heffernan said. Designing and installing a proper lighting system would cost $100,000 and potentially much more.
City staff members are looking at all options for making lighting work, Heffernan said, and have not given up on the offer from the mall. But it doesn’t look good.
The good news for skaters is city leaders do want to get lights at the park, he said. A funding request for lights might go into the mix of proposals the council will consider when crafting the city’s budgets for 2015 and 2016.
But it would have to compete with a lot of other citywide issues.
Skaters I spoke with at the park said they would love to have lights there. Lights would open the sport up to more people and allow more time for play.
Kyle Rodriquez said having a lit park would keep boarders out of parking garages and other structures they visit at night only to regularly get kicked out.
“None of us want to get a ticket for trying to have fun,” he said.
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