According to the Chron’s Michelle Casady, all is not well in the lofts near the city’s new skatepark:
Even on a rainy Wednesday afternoon, kids and parents were lined up and waiting for the Lee and Joe Jamail Skatepark to reopen. Across the street, through a parking lot and behind a gate, residents of the Sabine Street Lofts were hoping the weather would grant them a reprieve.
Since the 30,000-square-foot park alongside Buffalo Bayou opened June 1, an average of 320 people have skated its ramps and concrete bowls every day.
Lofts residents say the skaters also have tagged city property, left behind soda cans and snack-food trash and even trespassed onto loft property to skate in the parking garage.
Topping their complaints is illegal parking on the Sabine Street bridge, which they say constricts the route they use into and out of the complex.
“I just think when they build something as large as that, that has such a huge impact on the community, there should be a public hearing process, but there wasn’t one,” said Dee Carpenter, who has lived in the lofts for four years. “No one ever checked to see if parking was going to be an issue, and it has been.”
[snip]
Carpenter said some residents have discussed moving.
“There’s some people here who are like, ‘Hey, my lease is up in June, July, August. We’ll see where we are then, but we might move,’ ” she said.
This seems to conflict with a local advocacy group’s promise of an idyllic world if only the city would build a skatepark (via Swamplot):
If you want to get the kids off the streets, get them to quit tearing up your ledges and your rails, and put them some place where they can actually have some fun and stay out of trouble, a place where families can come hang out — there’s a real need for it in a city this big.
Just hanging out, and having fun. The loft residents are probably being unreasonable.
