The debate continued last Tuesday night, when the Seattle Parks Department Project Advisory Team met at the Segway building, on the site of the future park.

The team, made up of representatives from skateboarding associations, community activists, business interests and parks staff, agreed that the future park must include skate elements but could not agree on how much of the park would be dedicated to skating or what those elements would be.

The Project Advisory Team was put together by parks staff after Mayor Greg Nickels came out in support of building skate elements into the Civic Center Park. Nickels support ultimately sent planners, who recommended a skateboard free park, back to the drawing board at least long enough to add skateboard friendly ideas into the design.

The entire park will encompass approximately 60,000 square feet of space between Northwest 57th Street and 22nd Avenue Northwest. Existing skate elements in the park take up nearly 10,000 square feet.

“I don’t think we can expect the community to accept one-sixth of the park for a skate area,” Parks Planner Cathy Tuttle said about using the existing skateboard footprint for the new park.

“You wouldn’t want to go much smaller than 8,000 square feet,” Micah Shapiro of the Puget Sound Skatepark Association said, touching off an impromptu bidding session about the size of the future skate area.

“It [8,000 square feet] would dominate the park,” returned Davidya Kasperzyk, an architect and one of the contributors to the original park design.

Shapiro and Kasperzyk were vocal counterparts in the debate over how much of the park should be for skaters. Shapiro was concerned that too small a skating area would be unusable for skateboarders. Kasperzyk offered that too large a skate area would make the park unusable for everyone else.

The meeting, not short on passion, often seemed rudderless, as if it was primarily an opportunity for people to vent. Advisory team member Sarah Neilson, who is also a commissioner for the parks board, frequently helped channel polemics into consensus.

“This conversation is so abstract,” she said at one point. “It would be productive if we had a couple of different options with a range of sizes [for the skateboard elements].”

Ultimately, the team agreed that by the next meeting they should decide from three different scenarios. Designers and parks staff will develop park plans with skate elements in sizes of 4,000, 5,000 and 7,000 square feet.

The meeting did not come to a decision about what form these elements should take.

Existing skate elements at the site of the future park are a bowl and street skate area. The skate bowl is a custom built concrete depression occupying about 2,000 square feet, bordering the QFC grocery store on the southwest corner of NW 57th street.

The street skate area, adjacent to the bowl, is a kind of training course for skaters of varying skill levels. The bowl is generally used by more advanced skateboarders.

The existing skate bowl was also a point of contention at the parks meeting. Several team members expressed disappointment at the Parks Department’s unwillingness to consider integrating the existing structure in the new park. The Ballard Bowl, as it has come to be known, was built largely from volunteer efforts and private donations.

Kate Martin, a member of the Parents for the Ballard Bowl Association but not on the Project Advisory Team, interrupted the meeting several times from the audience, protesting what she claimed was dishonesty from parks staff regarding the existing bowl.

“I really object to this continued harassment,” Kasperzyk shouted at one point, after being interrupted by Martin.

Scott Shinn, who represented the Parents for the Ballard Bowl on the Project Advisory Team, said Martin was not representing the association during her protesting, but that he empathized with her anger about the fate of the existing Ballard Bowl. “[Parks Superintendent] Ken Bounds is sold on demolishing the bowl. Frankly, Cathy Tuttle is stonewalling and I think [Bounds] is in the dark,” Shinn said.

Parks Department Spokesperson Dewey Potter disputed Shinn’s claim.

“Ken’s looked at it and he’s satisfied he’s made the right decision,” said Potter. “[The existing bowl] was not built to standards we will build a bowl to.”

The team’s next meeting will be on Tuesday, July 20 at the Segway Building. The meetings are open to the public.