This is the Broomfield, Colorado Skatepark. I've been all over this country in search of skateparks, and this isn't the worst park ever built, but it's not winning any awards for design or creativity any time soon either. It is, however, yet another example of a disturbing trend in American communities- poorly designed skateparks. The street course is a thoughtless "Erector-Set-style" installation. These types of parks aren't even "built", they are "installed." They are widely labeled "McParks" with spite.That right there tells you something about the unsettling similarities they have to the fast food industry. As for the specifics of the Broomfield parks design, the rails are too low, making them dangerously easy to overshoot. Some of the transitions are too quick to provide good flow around the course, and the flat banks are entirely too steep. The concrete bowl is far too wide open to be functional, and the "almost" vert ramp won't cut it when the Tony Hawk Skatepark Tour comes rollin' through town.

The Broomfield, CO skatepark, manufactured by Skatewave, is just one more mass produced park designed in order to be a quick, easy, and cheap option for uninformed communities looking to provide a place for their youth to go. "But these parks are designed with skater imput!", their designers claim. Perhaps they did gather imput from the local kids who have been skating for a week, but you won't find experienced skaters voluntarily endorsing this type of design. The truth is, these parks grow old and lose their challenge very quickly as the kids get older and progress their abilities. The materials used may of high quality and durable, but the design of the obstacles is not conducive to long term use. The park may be full of kids on opening day, but go back a year later and it's empty. Where have they gone? They've either quit because they weren't challenged enough by the park, or abandoned the park and gone back out onto the streets, where they will seek the challenging terrain they desire, defeating the purpose of the skatepark in the first place. Civic leaders may defend their choice of this type of park by stating that it is not the place of a community to provide advanced level skateparks for their youth - usually insurance liability used to justify this philosophy. However, what civic leaders fail to grasp is that with skateboarding and inline skating, advanced skaters are frequently under the age of eighteen, some as young as thirteen. They are still children, even if they don't see themselves that way. If the community does not provide a well-designed facillity with obstacles challenging all ability levels, the users will head out onto the streets to find it, where damages, consequences and liabilities are far greater than those involved with building and insuring a high quality skatepark.

The photos I took of the Broomfield park were taken on a Saturday- where are all the kids? Perhaps at a better designed park? Back in the street? Think about it. Skateboarding isn't like basketball, where every court is precisely the same. In fact, it is the opposite. The best skateparks are unique and have character. Committed skateboarders constantly look for different terrain to continually refine their skills and expand their horizons. This is why skateboarders as a whole travel so much. If a skatepark built in your town is well designed, it will bring users from outside the community to your town-and their wallets. If it is one of these cookie-cutter installations, it will be forgotten and overlooked, and the time and money spent will have been wasted.

The death blow to this park is the peculiar fact that it is the only public skatepark in all of Colorado that I know of that charges a fee to use. It's under 5 bucks, but given this park's close proximity to the massive concrete wonders in Denver, Aurora, Boulder, and other Colorado communities (that are free to use), it is still too much to pay for this poorly designed park. The City of Broomfield loses major points there. Don't bother travelling to this park and infusing some cash into Broomfield's economy - save your time and money for another Colorado town with a free, smart, skater-designed, high-quality park.