The extension is contingent on the formation of a committee to find a permanent site for a skate park.
By Knowles Adkisson / The Malibu Times
The City of Malibu has received an extension to keep Papa Jack’s skate park at its current location at the corner by Civic Center Way and Cross Creek Road.
Developer Steve Soboroff, who owns property that contains the park, said he would extend the lease until October if the city council appointed a committee to search for a permanent site for the skate park.
Malibu Parks and Recreation Director Bob Stallings announced the news at the Parks and Recreation Commission’s regular meeting Thursday, which Soboroff confirmed in an email to The Malibu Times during the weekend. Soboroff had terminated the lease in December, giving the city, which currently rents the property at no cost, 90 days to move the park.
Soboroff submitted an application to the city in May last year to develop the six-acre parcel of land located at Civic Center Way and Cross Creek Road. He plans to build a 24,000-square-foot Whole Foods store and four buildings totaling 14,000 square feet of additional retail space, with up to 4,000 square feet dedicated to a restaurant and food service at the site.
Stallings prepared a staff report, at the request of the city council, for the council to consider the formation of a skate park ad-hoc committee at the council’s quarterly meeting Jan. 26. The committee would consist of two council members who would conduct a search for a new site for the skate park. Stallings said he also provided the alternative of a skate park task force, which would still include the two council members but would allow them to add community members to the committee.
Soboroff has said that the property needs to be cleared and fenced in order to begin the environmental impact review for the shopping center development, which would take about four years. Soboroff indicated in the email to The Times that he would be willing to serve on a skate park task force, if asked, and would also donate $25,000 to the effort.
“This is the best way to get this done permanently,” he wrote. “Skate parks need to be in parks, not commercial districts.”
He also rejected the implication that terminating the park’s lease was a means of putting pressure on the city to expedite the proposed development, which has been delayed by a septic ban imposed by the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board in September. There has been an immediate halt on septic permitting for commercial and residential properties in the Civic Center area since the ban.
Calling the Whole Foods development “a very low density, rural, Malibu-friendly project,” Soboroff said it is “needed and widely welcomed and supported.”
Papa Jack’s is the only skate park in Malibu. People have complained that the park is lacking in quality, and have also said it doesn’t belong in a commercial area.
Parks and Recreation Commissioner Regan Schaar has been outspoken in her advocacy for a permanent skate park in Malibu.
“I think the biggest benefit is it’s something that kids can do all year round, and it’s something that we offer to teenagers,” Schaar told The Times. “We don’t have anywhere in our community for teenagers to go [right now]. They get in a lot of trouble that, if they had somewhere to go, it might be avoided.”
Schaar, whose son started skating at Papa Jack’s as a child and who now, she said, travels with the famous pro skate boarder Tony Hawk for skate boarding demonstrations, believes a permanent skate park in Malibu makes sense for a number of other reasons. She referenced the success of skate parks in Oxnard and Santa Monica, which she described as “packed all the time.” Skate boarding also complements the surf culture, she said, so that when there is no surf, youth could skate instead. A bonus, Schaar said, is the only maintenance required for skate parks is periodic sweeping, so it would cost the city little to operate.
The most pressing issue now appears to be finding a permanent site for the park. Parks and Recreation commissioners raised the possibility at Thursday’s meeting of “bundling” a new skate park with a commercial development. In such an arrangement, a developer would donate land and/or money for a skate park in exchange for assistance from the city in pushing the development through.
Parks and Recreation Commissioner Graeme Clifford sounded optimistic about the possibility of finding a permanent site for the skate park.
“If we get this ad hoc committee or task force, whichever it is, and we get a group of people who can actually laser in on it, I think the solution is out there, I really do,” Clifford said.
Schaar also looked at the lease termination as a possible blessing in disguise: “Maybe it will get the city motivated to find a more permanent spot, which is what the city needs really.”