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11-15-2024 1:29 am • PDX and SEA Weather
MLK Breakfast
Portland Parks & Recreation (PP&R) announces that Creston Park, located at 4454 SE Powell Blvd., will be the site of a new public skatepark for the city. In December 2022, former Parks Commissioner Carmen Rubio announced $5 million in Parks System Development Charges (SDCs) for a new skate park in Southeast Portland. Following extensive research and comparison of several prospective locations through the bureau’s site selection criteria, Portland Culture & Livability Commissioner Dan Ryan agreed with the Bureau that Creston Park was the best site.
“It’s a wonderful opportunity to enhance and improve a significant portion of Creston Park,” says Commissioner Ryan. “And the community interest is clear, with nearly 700 people responding to the Portland Parks & Recreation survey about what features and elements they want to see in a new skateboarding area.”
SDC funds, the funding source for this project, are not tax dollars. They are one-time fees assessed on new development and can only be used to expand the capacity of the park system (for example, new park developments), not maintenance. SDC funds help ensure that Portland's quality of life keeps pace with our growing and changing city by providing the additional park and recreation facilities needed to accommodate growth.
“The skatepark coming to Creston Park will serve the largest number of people in a two-mile service area,” notes PP&R Director Adena Long. “And our data shows that this area has the largest number of overall youth and of people of color out of the locations we studied.”
The project will now enter the design phase, with construction anticipated to start in 2025, and the grand opening possible in the spring of 2026.
Portland Parks & Recreation’s Level of Service Guidance Developed Parks and Natural Areas Study (LOS) identifies that every household in the city should be within two miles of a skatepark. Sixty-five percent of city households do not – the largest percentage gap of the 13 types of assets in the study.
Creston Park currently includes an outdoor pool that is open in the summertime, a recently renovated playground, tennis courts, a large open lawn, a picnic area, a restroom building, and a parking lot. The most logical location for the new skatepark at Creston Park is the existing tennis court area east of the swimming pool. The tennis courts are in reportedly bad condition, and that site would offer space for a sizeable skatepark.
