ENCINITAS — The Encinitas City Council has appointed a committee of residents, skateboarders and community leaders to recommend ideas for future skate features and a potential skate park.
The newly established Skate Feature Committee has a broad charge to design a practical, functional skate park or feature somewhere in the city.
At the May 13 City Council meeting where the committee was formed, Councilmember Luke Shaffer said skating had always been a place of meditation for him. Shaffer added that he looked forward to building skate spots for a community that had, for decades, resorted to flocking to unplanned, built features around Encinitas.
“People found places to go skate,” he said. “I think that it’s time to bring the skate culture, at least in our community, out to the forefront and give it its due.
“Skating was born in the counterculture. It was born, it was pushed into the corners, pushed into, ‘do it on your own time.’ It still kind of lives in that because that’s where it existed for so long.”
The committee was planned to consist of 10 residents, two Parks and Recreation Commission members and two City Council members.
Shaffer and Councilmember Marco San Antonio will represent the council on the committee.
“You guys both skate enough that I think it would be good,” Mayor Bruce Ehlers said.
For the remaining 12 positions, the city received 21 applications, according to city documents.
City Clerk Pete Weichers said that after review, only 13 applicants were deemed eligible. Only one of the eligible applicants was from the Parks and Recreation Commission, so the City Council decided to shift the other planned seat to an at-large position.
The following 12 members were appointed unanimously to the Skate Feature Committee:
Tony Burman — Began skating in the 1980s and moved to the area to attend the University of San Diego, where he started the skate club and helped build a mobile skate park on campus. He told the council he became “acquainted with the movers and the shakers” in Encinitas by “skating poods religiously” since it opened.
Danny DiCola — A professional skateboarder, surfboard shaper and manager at Outdoor Adventures on Camp Pendleton, who found a passion for skate features as a way to honor his father, a concrete worker. He told the council that as a pro skateboarder, he has “traveled around the world, working with the concrete, I was designing and building skate features that are still around for over 15 years.”
Elise Esprit — A mother who said she looked to skateboarding as a place for her two children to make friends after they moved to Encinitas. She presented the council with a series of photos, calling herself a very visual person, and said that given all the artwork in the area, “it would be a really great statement to have like a bronze statue of a skateboarder somewhere in Encinitas.”
Gabrielle Holley — A lawyer who no longer skates but was active in the community beginning in the 1980s. She has volunteered with Exposure Skate and wrote on her application that she could “be an objective and useful member of the propose[d] committee.”
Jeff Jewett — An Encinitas resident with more than 30 years of experience in the skateboarding industry, spanning coaching, production and advocacy. On his application, he wrote that he has “actively advocated for a ‘skate spot over skate park’ model.”
Andy Macdonald — A professional skateboarder who, at 51, became the oldest Olympic skateboarder during the Paris Games, won a gold medal in vert at the first X Games and once held the Guinness World Record for the longest distance jumped on a skateboard.
Summer Meyer — A San Dieguito Academy graduate and local Realtor.
Alex Neal — A longtime Encinitas resident with a high-level skateboarding son and a background in entrepreneurship and nonprofits. He told the council he understands “collaboration, fiscal responsibility, and community projects and local roots. I’ve lived here for nearly three decades and I care deeply about preserving our culture while helping our infrastructure evolve safely for the community.”
Joshua Rowe — A teacher who grew up skateboarding at the Encinitas YMCA Skate Park and has accumulated a wide range of professional and nonprofit experience in the skate industry. He told the council, “I understand what the local scene wants and my goal is really to help make like what the next generation wants to and what will serve best for the next generation.”
Mike Staples — A longtime Cardiff resident and musician who wrote on his application that playing at Encinitas events, as well as spending time with artists and at skate parks in Encinitas, “have given me a strong sense of how each space serves the community and the unique personality each one carries.”
Beth Van Boxtel — A longtime Encinitas resident with personal and professional ties to skateboarding. Van Boxtel is also a master gardener who told the council, “I have a strong understanding of plants that thrive in our climate. I believe that perspective can help create a skate park that feels integrated into its surroundings by incorporating plants around the skate park.”
Julie Van der Auwera — Representing the Parks and Recreation Commission, she wrote on her application that her experience working as a liaison between the city and residents would help her “focus on exploring all opportunities for this initiative” and “integrate the Encinitas General Plan with the skate culture.”
