Thursday, August 14, 2014

No Bikes Allowed At Taxpayer Funded Skatepark

Today Houston opened a new skatepark.  Not just a skatepark but the largest skatepark in the USA.  Here is the description of the skate park from the Greenspoint Redevelopment agency's web site

With 72,000 square feet of skate surface, the skate park will cater to the young and young-at-heart. The unique design includes a world-class competition-scale Texas bowl featuring a full pipe, 12-foot vert ramp, 10-foot bowl, banked walls and speed hips, plus a couple of backyard-style pools and three beginner/intermediate/advanced flow bowls.  A section designed to emulate the street-skating experience will have ledges, rails, benches, banks, quarter pipes and stair obstacles, providing fun and creative challenge for skaters of all levels and interests.

Sounds great and is an exciting edition to Houston right?  Except they have decided that BMX riders are not allowed to use the park.   Of course skateparks all over the country are shared by bikers and skateboarders.  Seems to me folks at the Greenspoint Redevelopment Agency took a cool idea and failed to implement it with any understanding of what they were building.

Today at the skateparks opening there were protesters. A great first step in letting the powers that be know they should reconsider the policy.  To continue and voice displeasure with the policy, there are a few folks who should be contacted.  Just 4 emails needed: 

  1. The park was built by the Greenspoint Redevelopment Agency. The Executive Director is Sally Bradford   
  2.  The park will be operated by the Greenspoint Agency and the Greenspoint Agency Parks Manager is Treena Dockery
  3. The City of Houston Parks Board approved the park and the  Executive Director is Roksan Okan-Vick
  4.  Lastly, our Mayor who I think is pretty good about this stuff Anise Parker 
Here is the complete contact info. 



Sally Bradford
Executive Director
16800 Greenspoint Park Drive
Suite 160 South
Houston, TX 77060 
281-877-9952


Treena Dockery
Parks & Recreation Manager 
281-874-2146
tdockery@greenspoint.org



Roksan Okan-Vick   
(713) 942-8500  
Roksan@houstonparksboard.org

Mayor Annise D. Parker
City of Houston
P.O. Box 1562 Houston, TX 77251
Phone: 3-1-1, or 713.837.0311
Email: mayor@houstontx.gov  

Roksan
Oka

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