(The following story by Jerry L. Gleason appeared on The Patriot-News website on June 28.)
HARRISBURG, Pa. — Sometimes sneaky works. Sometimes it falls flat on its face.
Carlos Baiza had an underground plan to bypass officials and slip a piece of Philadelphia’s successful skateboard park into Harrisburg. The plan seemed to work.
“I have no tolerance for meetings and paper work,” he said. “We did it renegade style.”
So a team of 20 to 30 people ripped a page from Baiza’s work on the 16,000-square-foot skateboard plaza in FDR Park in South Philadelphia.
On June 19, the Harrisburg group used donated materials to build a 30-foot concrete half-pipe under an iron truss Norfolk Southern Railroad bridge in south Harrisburg.
It worked. For a day or two.
City police discovered the renegade installation Sunday, and Norfolk Southern maintenance crews ripped it out Thursday.
“Wow, they got to it quick,” said Baiza, who organized the half-pipe’s construction. “I don’t know what to do. Apparently they don’t want something like this in Harrisburg.”
Rudy Husband, a railroad spokesman, said the half-pipe was built on railroad property without permission.
“We removed it, and we expect to be reimbursed for our cost,” Husband said. He said the railroad is totaling its cost to remove the structure.
The half-pipe was built in a section of the Capital Area Greenbelt at the end of the west end of Shanois Street, just west of the 1400 block of South Cameron Street. It was between the abutments at one end of the railroad bridge, which is on Norfolk Southern’s Steelton industrial line, Husband said.
The railroad line is active and Norfolk Southern uses the bridge to train bridge inspectors, he said.
Baiza said he and the other skateboarding enthusiasts decided to build the half-pipe because Harrisburg doesn’t have a skateboard park and isn’t likely to get one.
“We built it in the middle of a city park,” he said, suggesting it should be OK to build there.
Husband said that, while the railroad line goes through the greenbelt, it still is private property.
“Being in a park doesn’t mean that the public has free access to the location,” Husband said. “You can’t build anything you want on private property or in a city park.”
Matthew Coulter, a city spokesman, said city police became aware on Sunday that the half-pipe had been built.
“Once we determined that the facility had been built on railroad property, we turned the matter over to Norfolk Southern,” Coulter said. “City police have looked into it, but no charges have been filed against the builders.”
Coulter said Tina King, the city’s parks and recreation director, spoke with Baiza and asked him if he had permission to build the facility.
“He said, ‘No, it takes too much time and effort,'” Coulter said.
Baiza, who grew up in New Cumberland and lives in Philadelphia, said he used to build houses but now goes around the country building skateboard parks, with or without official permission.
“I’ve built skateboard parks all over the country,” he said.
He helped build the skatepark in Philadelphia’s Franklin D. Roosevelt Park on the city’s south side, Baiza said.
Philadelphia officials designated 16,000 square feet in FDR Park as the site for a skateboard park after banning skateboarding from the city’s Love Park near City Hall.
Philly skateboarders weren’t satisfied with the city’s construction and decided to improve on it. They designed and built additional skateboarding facilities at the site with city approval, using volunteers and donated money and materials.
The FDR Skatepark is now considered one of the premier skateboarding facilities in the United States and hosted the 2005 Gravity Games.
Something like that isn’t likely to happen here because Harrisburg is anti-skateboarding, Baiza said.
“They have a bad image of skateboarders and skateboarding,” he said. “Skateboards are everywhere. How many kids do you see in front of their houses on the skateboards because they have nowhere else to go?
“Every community should have a skateboard park, and they should be free and open to everyone,” Baiza said.