Manteca is getting a second skate park.

Where it will be built is not known.

Nor is what features it will entail.

Those questions and commissioning plans for the skate park will take place this year.

When it will be built depends on park-related growth fees and other funding.

The city has $100,000 to go toward a skate park after Mayor Gary Sing earmarked $100,000 of COVID pass through relief funds for the endeavor.

City Manager Toni Lundgren said a concerted effort will be made to enlist input from skaters and the community to select the optimum location and the preferred features.

“It’s wide open,” she said when it comes to possible locations within the city’s park system.

It could go at Woodward Park, Northgate Park, a new larger neighborhood park, or some other location.

What Lundgren said  the city won’t do is repeat the mistake the city made in 1999 when politics — with a healthy dose of community pushback against the idea of even accommodating skateboarders who were viewed as less than  desirable — led to where the current skate park is located.

The politics centered around a genuine dislike at the time of the majority of the council when it came to then Councilman Wayne Flores’ take on what be believed was best for Manteca.

Flores, who has since passed away, pushed for a skate park.

The council majority rejected the idea outright at a council meeting where members of the public trashed skateboarders as juvenile delinquents and called the concept a colossal waste of money.

Undeterred, Flores organized adults and youth that supported a skate park to appear at council meeting after council meeting to make their case for what one council member at the time openly dismissed as not being a sport nor an appropriate recreational pursuit.

A petition drive helped give the skateboarders more support in the community.

The council majority relented.

They agreed to build a skate park.

The effort to secure a site went through five locations that met fierce resistance from nearby residents and businesses as well as from council members.

Woodward Park was rejected as not being appropriate.

The grassy area in front of the golf course south of the tennis courts was determined to be disrespectful those attending funeral services across the street because skaters “made too much noise.

The area at the Civic Center where the dog park is now located was rejected.

Even a site on city property sandwiched between the Tidewater Bikeway and Moffat Boulevard that had nothing at the time but aging and dilapidated buildings  was rejected because it was too high profile for passing traffic.

The location decided on is sandwiched between a PG&E substation and the Union Pacific Railroad tracks. The nearest access point being a walk of a good 300 plus feet from the nearest road — Center Street .

It was problematic location from the start.

Young thugs — harassing younger skaters — using drugs, and carrying knives started populating the area within weeks of its completion. 

Its location made it a logistical nightmare for Manteca Police to patrol. 

Finally, a surveillance camera with a direct feed to the police dispatch center was installed virtually eliminating those problems.

Within a few years, the city had to install wrought iron fencing to prevent kids form crossing the tracks to reach the skatepark.

In recent years some parents have been reluctant to allow their kids to use the skate park when homeless were bedding down behind bushes along the Tidewater Bikeway that runs past the facility.

The location wasn’t the only thing that was less than stellar.

The council committed to spending $400,000 on a skate park using bonus bucks collected from developers for sewer allocation certainty.

The city slashed the amount to $150,000 to allow the diversion of $250,000 to help cover a general fund budget shortfall so the council at the time wouldn’t have to ask voters for a tax increase

 Today the skate park — surrounded by barren dirt and often nearby weeds — looks as if it would be more at home in the rundown section of a Mojave Desert community. 

Lundgren indicated a time table for community discussions on a skatepark will be established in the coming months.

To contact Dennis Wyatt, email dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com