Green Lake skate park 7pm Wednesday night, empty other than me. The city has spent over $500,000 plus state grants of Seattle city tax money on several parks in the past four years. Bikes are not allowed in any. The Green Lake dirt jumps sit 50 feet away. The BMX riders have to ride the one and only Seattle city condoned but not funded and unofficial BMX area looking at a $600,000 plus park they can not ride. Now some of the blame here goes to the bike community for not being organized enough to go to the original park planning meetings to be heard. However some of the blame and issue falls on the city. They have designed and built knowingly or not a park amenity that has multiple uses and excluded some tax payers from it's use. It's like building a ball field and saying only baseball is allowed because the size of a softball will damage the grass to much when it hits the ground. The skateboarding organized community that worked and made this park happen left bikes out of the public input, funding, and design process possibly by accident or on purpose. It doesn't mater either way a public facility has been built to the exclusion of a specific portion of the public that helped pay for it and continue to pay in tax levies.
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