EASTHAMPTON — The future of the city’s proposed skate park remains up in the air as a workable location has not been agreed upon.
While advocates of the new Easthampton Skatepark want to put a new park at the site of the city’s first skate park — what’s now known as Millside Park — members of the Parks and Recreation Commission have asked to see other options. The city’s Planning Department began exploring Millside Park after contamination concerns thwarted plans at a possible site on Payson Avenue, behind the public safety complex.
“Considering other options isn’t a nefarious scheme — it’s our due diligence to look at all the options,” commission Chairman Paul St. Pierre said at Wednesday’s meeting at Millside Park.
Initially, advocates of the Easthampton Skatepark said they thought the commission would be reviewing Millside Park as an option at the meeting as an outline had been spray-painted and staked out in advance of the meeting.
However, St. Pierre read a statement saying he would like another site to be considered first. He said he felt that the process “has not been smooth or respectful” to this point.
“This is a beautiful and clean park. People want to be here. They want to spend time here with their families. If there was a skate park here, it would change the park, but it absolutely could be successful,” he said.
“On the other hand, there would be some drawbacks. It would change the character of this park from being a passive recreation park, as it’s designed, to have an active recreation component. We heard feedback that it is unlikely the yoga and the fitness classes would continue to take place here because the dynamic of the park would be changed and they wouldn’t feel comfortable.”
City Planner Jeff Bagg said that he was “caught a little off guard by the chair opening the meeting with such a firm statement against the Millside Park location.”
Before opening public comment, St. Pierre directed the roughly 30 people in attendance to a site down the Manhan Rail Trail, behind Pleasant Street mills.
“Another potential site we’d like to take a further look at is very close by. It’s part of the mill district. It has many benefits of this location and it is larger,” he said.
Shouted comments suggested that the jaunt took some in attendance by surprise.
“We have not been told that it’s impossible to put a skate park there. … I want people to see that there are other possible options where we can put a skate park,” said St. Pierre.
After looking over the site, the group returned to where the meeting had been assembled at picnic tables under the bandshell of Millside Park.
At that point, Nance MacDonald came forward to speak in favor of a skate park being built there. Twenty-five years ago, MacDonald and her husband, Robert MacDonald, helped create a skate park in honor of their son, David MacDonald, who died in an automobile accident in June 1997 at age 16.
She questioned what happened to the skate park that was supposed to be built there after the original was torn down and where the grant funds that were secured went.
“We were told to put the kids in a dump last time and now you’re gonna put them in a swamp?” she asked.
Other advocates took issue with some of the comments St. Pierre made in his opening statement.
Easthampton Skatepark organizer Angie Falkowski described St. Pierre’s statements as “inconsistent.” Falkowski challenged his comments about volunteers only coming forward to the commission two months ago, saying she had met with Parks and Recreation Director John Mason, Mayor Nicole LaChapelle and Bagg in December 2019.
“John Mason said there was ‘absolutely no way’ and we were told by the city to exclude Parks and Rec from our planning because he didn’t want to see a park,” she said. “So we started this whole project and tried to find land that isn’t a part of Parks and Recreation.”
At the last commission meeting May 18, the Planning Department alongside the informal skate park committee submitted a packet of information in support of a new skate park to be located at Millside Park, said Bagg.
At that meeting, the commission requested additional information about other sites that had been explored and ruled out over the last three years.
In a five-page memo addressed to the commission, Bagg listed 13 different sites with accompanying descriptions.
Among the rejected sites were Mountain View School, Easthampton High School parking lot, Parsons Street school parcel, Hendrick Street, a lot off Button Road in the Treehouse community, and Center, Pepin and Maple Street elementary schools.
His list also included the site St. Pierre had suggested, saying that it is not suitable because it provides the required stormwater runoff areas for the parking that was constructed behind the mills as part of the approximately $8 million infrastructure improvements completed in 2015 and cannot be paved over.
During Wednesday’s meeting, Bagg presented new designs developed by the Platform Group, a Tampa, Fla., custom skate park design firm. The designs were for three locations at Nonotuck Park — Daley Field, adjacent to pavilion one and adjacent to the pickleball courts.
The company had been brought on board to design the original proposed site on Payson Avenue and has provided the requested three new mockups at no additional cost, said Bagg.
Millside Park has been identified as a preferred location for the skate park because it was identified as a site for a skate park in the 2002 Urban Rivers Plan, the 2005 Millside Park renovation plan, and in 2007 and 2008 grant writing for Millside Park improvements, according to the memo. The site has also been identified as having adequate parking and adequate non-vehicle access, said Bagg.
Anja Duffy, who identified herself as a landscape architect from Holyoke, also advocated for the Millside Park site. Recently, she said, she worked with a skate park designer on a project for the city of Springfield.
“I happen to know very well that skate parks go hand in hand with basketball,” Duffy said. “They go hand in hand with lots of active recreational sports. This park (Millside) doesn’t seem like a passive park to me … this is the best spot for a skate park.”
After more than two hours, the commission and advocates of the Easthampton Skatepark agreed to reconvene in August. The Planning Department and advocates agreed to provide preliminary designs for Daley Field, Millside Park and the drainage areas behind Pleasant Street mills.
“There, we found common ground. It only took us two hours, but we did,” said Andy Hunter, a member of the Parks and Recreation Commission.
Emily Thurlow can be reached at ethurlow@gazettenet.com.
