The new hot spot

School’s barely out on a recent afternoon and the Ruben Pier Memorial Skate Park is already packed with dozens of skateboarders, BMX bicyclists and kids on scooters.

The skaters don’t care for the rap the two-week old facility in Sherwood Park has gotten because of incidents of vandalism and littering. They say that nobody who cares about the skate park would do anything to risk it staying open.

“I’m gonna call the cops on anyone I see up here (breaking the law) for sure,” 18-year-old Kelly Shelton said. “I’ll be a narc.”

Some didn’t take well to the possibility of the park being closed, a possibility raised after concrete at the $350,000 skate park was spray painted with graffiti just days after it opened.

“If they closed this place down, people would come up here and skate anyway,” 15-year-old Steven Easlon said. “(Expletive) that, I’d jump the fence.”

But Steve Patton, Odessa parks and recreation director, said he only discussed temporarily closing the 10,500-square-foot park and only if the city lost control of the situation, which he said he doesn’t see happening.

“It’s not like we’re bringing a fence out there right now,” Patton said. “We would first call a meeting. When I say the situation is out of hand, I mean the plaza is covered in graffiti, other problems I don’t want to get into.”

Some skaters were concerned about a possible double standard in how skateboarders and other users of the city’s parks are treated.

“They treat us like we’re children,” Easlon said. “They’re gonna punish us if we don’t do what’s (expletive) right. They’re saying skating’s not a sport. They wouldn’t shut down a basketball court if they threw trash on it.”

But Patton said he would treat anyplace else in the park system the same way if it had the “multitude” of problems Sherwood had shortly after the park opened.

“I would shut it down until we got a handle on the situation,” he said. “If it gets bad enough, I’d shut anyplace down if it endangers the safety of the public.”

Since the first round of graffiti, which cost $1,800 to remove, Patton said the park has had “one little patch” of graffiti — eighth-and-a-half by 11-inch markings in 10 different places. That was removed Monday.

“We’ll continue to monitor the situation,” Patton said. “It’ll stay on close patrol by the police department.”

But what Patton said he wouldn’t do is have security regularly stationed at the skate park.

Although he acknowledges that many rules, including those calling for no smoking and for young children to be monitored, are routinely broken, Patton said there is only so much the city can do about it because providing full-time security would increase its liability.

“Once you station somebody out there, or if you permanently fence it or charge a fee — that’s just like a swimming pool,” he said.

Ultimately, parents are the ones who need to monitor their children’s activities at the skate park, which opened Nov. 1, Patton said.

“The city cannot raise children, that’s not our job,” he said. “They’ve got to take some responsibility themselves.”

And, while skate park designers had called for it to at least initially be open only to skateboarders, Patton said others are welcome.

“It’s for bikes, scooters, skateboards, inline skates,” he said. “They’ve just got to respect one another and get along and use it like all the other cities who have skate parks in Texas who are unmonitored.”

Since warnings about graffiti and littering were issued, Patton said the park has seen significant improvements.

“Since that time, we’ve had a huge, fantastic improvement with everybody taking care of things,” he said.

Shelton said more people have watched littering and other problems at the skate park.

“People have been picking up trash off the ground, and we do pick up other people’s trash,” he said.

Mark Riddle, who lives across 49th Street from Sherwood Park, said the skaters are mostly staying around the skate park.

“There’s been a lot of trash down there,” he said. “But as far as this end of the street, we haven’t seen a lot of kids down here.”

Patton said the skate park, which has been planned since shortly after 13-year-old Ruben Pier was killed while riding his skateboard in 2003 in western Odessa, should be a source of pride for the community, something he can show to visitors. And judging by the 93 people he counted there on a recent weeknight, he feels its on its way to that.

“The success of the park is seeing it being used and that’s what makes me happy,” he said.

And while much of the remainder of the 60-acre park is a ghost town at times compared to the bustling skate park, Patton expects that to change once a $4.437 million renovation to the park is complete in about a year. The renovations will include a perimeter walking trail, a three-field baseball complex and a new playground.

But the skaters say getting a place of their own and not having to search for places to skate illegally has made a huge difference. Will Plaxco, 21, said he skates a mile every day to Sherwood.

“That’s how much I love the park,” he said.