Delridge Day celebrated the opening of the new Delridge Skatepark, located at 4458 Delridge Way s.w. on Saturday, Sept. 17 with tents and tables but primarily hundreds of skaters and hundreds more onlookers enjoying the new 13,000 square foot facility. There were kids picnic games and lots to do before the ribbon cutting with prizes to be won.

One of the original West Seattle builders of the now legendary skate bowl under the Schimtz Park Bridge, Steve Swervo, now 45 was there skating and having a great time. "We got arrested in 1991 for building that. So I love this. It's either this or the treadmill," he said.

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Marshall Reid was the Emcee and runs the Seattle Skateboarding Youth Club and is also a skateboarding instructor. He kept things fun and moving along. Not that it needed it. The new park was a hive of skateboarders of all levels of ability from the very beginners getting instruction to the accomplished experts, going for big air.

Doing some of the instruction was Kristin Ebeling who got involved with Skate Like A Girl when she was seventeen years old. "I'm 22 now and now I'm running it." It's a non profit group with chapters here, in Portland and San Francisco.

Pro skater Sky Siljeg was on hand to demonstrate his skills too. He said, "This is my first time here and it's great."

Stu Hennesey of Alki Bike and Board was in a booth and commented on how the park came to be, and the time it took. "It goes back to the time around 2001 when we started this process. And some of those kids, are all adults now." He's proud of West Seattle and the commitment it took to make it happen. "It means the community is providing for healthy activities and it's very important for a sustainable community to have that. Kids have to have something to do so they don't get bored and find things we don't want them to do. We looked at Delridge mainly because the location was more centralized. As a business person we could have pushed for Hiawatha or College Place Park but that didn't seem to be as important to any of us as having an area where it would benefit the community more."

Micah Shapiro of Grindline Skateparks Inc. who designed the park said, "It's really cool to have something like this in the city. Normally if I wanted to skate something like this I'd be driving half an hour to an hour to one of the parks somewhere else. To have this five minutes from my work so I can come over here for lunchtime sessions it's great. I try to skate a couple times a week and this being here is definitely going to make me skate a lot more."

David Addington a long time West Seattle resident and skater, who is 48 years old said, "I love it as much now as I ever have. When you come back to the skate park, each Delridge Days event and you are going to watch the local kids become incredible skateboarders(…) It's great exercise and a sense of accomplishment. You always get to set your own level (…) You set the bar as high as you choose it to be. We joke amongst ourselves that the best skateboarder is the one that's having the most fun."

Local skateboarders worked with Seattle Parks and Recreation and Grindline Skateparks Inc. to provide input on the park design. The skatepark features a 10’ deep advanced egg bowl and a large intermediate flow bowl, with depths ranging from 4’ to 7’. Around the two bowls, a flowing street course meanders through the large trees on the site. Grindline designed the park to integrate with the existing Delridge Playfield and take advantage of the shade provided by the trees. A new picnic area on the north side of the park provides great viewpoints into the skatepark.

SPAC Project Lead Matthew Lee Johnston was on hand to introduce Mayor Mike McGinn, Acting Seattle Parks Superintendent Christopher Williams, and Delridge Day Coordinator Amanda Leonard who all shared their gratitude to those involved in making the park a reality. Mayor McGinn said, "This park is rockin!" and credited the North Delridge Neighborhood Council, the Delridge Community Center, the Delridge Day Committee, Pete Spalding and others with getting it done. "Pete Spalding is one of those people who is really active in the community. They need some help. So when you hear the call, answer it because it leads to things like this project." McGinn also plugged a new school attendance campaign his office is starting. "We're starting an incentive based program to students. classrooms and schools that have good attendance records."

If you'd like to contribute a prize, contact the Mayor's office.

Williams acknowledged the Skatepark Advisory Committee, as well as Seattle City Councilmember Sally Bagshaw who helped reallocate money from the Parks and Green Space Levy passed in 2007. He thanked Parks Project Manager Kelly Davidson too.

Johnston made mention of the new park being something of a "Homecoming for West Seattle kids who started with a dream of building a skate bowl under the bridge in Schmitz Park. They ended up traveling the world together building skateparks. This park represents a 20 year legacy for those kids. Mark Hubbard and Brian Lyon have come home to where it all started and built the first skatepark in their own neighborhood." Johnston then humorously thanked the "Seattle Police Department for interceding under the bridge that day, coming down, drawing their guns, getting those guys out of there because if they were able to build that bowl this place may never have happened."

Johnston also had high praise for the Delridge Community saying that they "May be the most supportive community in the state."

Nancy Folsom, Delridge resident spoke and joked, "I really appreciate you all coming out to my personal sculpture park that Grindline built...for me." She pointed out that the new park is now part of a lot of recreational activities in a four square block area with the recent renovation of the Delridge play fields.
"This is what North Delridge is (...) It's people finding their own groove."

"Emerald Concrete," a 30 minute documentary created this summer by the RecTech Youth Media Corps, was shown in the Delridge Community Center. The documentary tells the story surrounding the building of a world-class skatepark on site at Delridge Community Center. This video documentary is a first effort for Seattle Parks Department interns and represents hours of hands-on learning, hard work and thoughtful story-telling. It will eventually come to YouTube the project manager said.

The event was sponsored by Nucor Steel, AllStar Fitness, Alki Bike and Board, and Highline Medical Center Urgent Care.