Teens help make skateboard plaza reality

Will Long, with his baggy jeans and shaggy hair, doesn't look like the typical resident who attends town board meetings.

But Long, 17, and his teenage friends have been meeting with Town of North Hempstead officials to give their input on a quality-of-life issue that is important to them: sanctioning a place to skate in the town.

To their surprise, the grown-ups are listening and a skateboard plaza is set to open this summer in the town-owned Manorhaven Beach Park. The Town Board last Tuesday authorized advertising for bids to build the 10,000-square-foot facility -- the only place in North Hempstead where skaters will be able to ride without being shooed away.

"Going to all those meetings, we actually got things done," said Long, a junior at Paul D. Schreiber High School in Port Washington. "I didn't think anything would actually get done."

The skateboarding teens are learning that if they take an active role in civic affairs, they can make things happen, said Robert Laker, 46, of Port Washington, a father of a skateboarder who watched the youth make speeches, pass out fliers and inundate elected leaders with passionate emails.

Karen Cohen, 50, a Port Washington mother of two teen skateboarders, had been trying to get a skate spot built since 2007 so she wouldn't have to take her boys to places such as Long Beach and New Jersey.

The process has taught her sons that their input matters to government officials, she said.

Town Councilman Fred Pollack, who represents Port Washington, said he's been impressed by his youthful constituents.

"They expressed what they want and why the want it," he said. "They are polite and articulate in getting their point across."

Those attributes are lost on some adults who demand things from Town Hall, Pollack said with a chuckle.

The skate plaza is expected to cost about $100,000 to construct, he said. "If we don't build something that the kids want to use, we're wasting our money," Pollack said.

That's why Long and his friends stay in touch with the California company designing the facility.

Curved ramps and stairs with rails are among the features they said they want.

Jason Baldessari, director of skate park development for Spohn Ranch, the design firm, said the teens have sent him numerous sketches that he has incorporated.

"The town was really good about listening to what [the teens] had to say," said Baldessari, 28, himself an avid skater. "That was kind of unique. A lot of times, there's not as much open communication."