Portland Parks coughs up $15 million for Steel Bridge Skatepark, What about Burnside?

Way back in the 2000’s Skaters for Portland Skateparks (SPS) started organizing to get a proper city-built public skatepark built in the city of Portland. At the time we had Burnside and funky, poorly designed and constructed Army Corp of Engineers Park in a part of town that was technically Portland, but was isolated on the outskirts of an industrial area that eventually leads to shipping terminals. I don’t know how it happened, but suddenly there was some money to rebuild Pier Park. SPS had an ally high up inside the Mayor’s office staff in skateboarder Tom Miller. He and SPS were pushing for a system of skateparks for Portland instead of just the one. I thought the plan was a little bit naive and was possibly going to blow the opportunity to get anything out of the city. Fortunately for the skateboarding community of Portland, Tom did not suffer from my lack of vision. We did end up getting several skateparks out of the proposed system of 20. This one near the Steel Bridge was always going to be the biggest of the lot, and the most complicated to get approved. It took a long time, and frankly most assumed the deal was dead. In a city with a $615M backlog in repairs, somehow this project is going forward. Don’t be like me. Be like Tom and SPS. Dream big.

The picture in the illustration is an old concept and will likely be revisited. Back those early days the community assumed it to be a fait accompli that design/construction would go to Dreamland or Grindline, 15+ years later I imagine we’ll see a much more crowded bidding field, fingers crossed that it goes to someone local. Who knows, maybe we’ll see a supergroup comprised of all the local builders. It might be difficult to orchestrate but those work crews seem to be fairly porous, so it could happen.

The Steel Bridge news comes at a time when the future of Burnside is on our minds due to the impending teardown and construction of a new Burnside bridge for seismic safety reasons. Some were worried that the Steel Bridge funding was approved as a trade off for the destruction of Burnside skatepark. The status of Burnside is not officially secure, but due to community feedback the bridge design currently in favor allows the skatepark to remain mostly intact, although it will definitely have to be closed during parts of the reconstruction. The Multnomah County video concerning the replacement bridge options highlights skatepark retention as a benefit in the favored bridge design.

Burnside today-ish…. It’s always in flux!

The currently favored option leaves burnside intact, with future archeologists wondering why there are 3 pillars to nowhere.

A seismic retrofit, somehow and fortunately more expensive than building anew bridge, would encroach on the skatepark and fundamentally change its nature.

Here’s the full video.

Fingers crossed, but that’s a lot of good news for Portland skateboarders.