Skateboarding Capital of the World

By CONOR DOUGHERTY

Portland, Ore.

This often-drizzly city may be the most skateboard-friendly town in America.

In Portland, skateboarding has been woven into parks and streets in the same manner as cycling or soccer. Skateboarding is illegal in downtowns across the country. Portland’s downtown is marked with “skate routes” featuring signs with a skateboarding stick figure. In most cities, skaters consider it a big victory when a skatepark is built. Portland is building a network of 19 skateparks scattered throughout the city. Skaters even have one of their own in City Hall: Tom Miller, chief of staff to Portland Mayor Sam Adams, rode into politics through skateboard advocacy and has continued pushing for skateparks from the inside.

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Bryce Kanights for the Wall Street Journal

Spensor Hill in action at the Ed Benedict skatepark in Portland, Ore.

It’s a transformation that began nearly two decades ago, when a bunch of Portland skaters built an illegal skatepark in a trash-strewn area under a downtown bridge. By 2020, skaters in this city of about 600,000 people will have just about every kind of terrain they could want. Five parks have already been built. The Ed Benedict skatepark, which opened in February in Portland’s southeast district, features built-in “street” obstacles such as ledges and stairs, where young skaters can be seen trying to flip their boards every which way. The ramp-oriented Pier Park opened in 2006 and has several concrete bowls, the deepest at 11 feet.

The centerpiece of the system will be a downtown skatepark, still in the proposal stage, that the city hopes will blur the lines between the typically cloistered skateboard park and an open urban plaza.

Portland’s skatepark system is just the biggest example of how skateboarders are institutionalizing their sport. Seattle, San Antonio and other cities have embraced the idea of the multi-skatepark “system.” Oceanside, Calif., just added two new skateparks, including a street-style park with rails and ledges and a ramp-heavy site that leads into a deep pool.

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Portland’s skatepark movement has not been without conflicts. The carefree skaters of 15 years ago are negotiating municipal responsibilities and power politics. BMX bikers—trick-oriented riders who who often ride the same terrain as skateboarders—were aligned with skaters in fighting for skateparks but feel skate advocates shut them out of the parks as the skateboarders gained power. In 2006, a front-page story in the Oregonian newspaper raised conflict-of-interest questions about Mr. Miller’s work in the City Commissioner’s office while at the same time serving as chairman of his skateboarding non-profit. (“I voluntarily vetted everything I did with the city attorney and no concerns were raised,” says Mr. Miller.)

It all started with an attempt to solve a typical dilemma in Portland: what to do in the rain. (It’s wet about 150 days a year.) In the 1980s, Portland skaters built wooden ramps under freeways or in roadside gullies, but Portland native Kent Dahlgren says many of his early projects were stolen. Rain took care of the rest. So in 1990, a group of skaters including Mark “Red” Scott and Mr. Dahlgren began building concrete ramps under Portland’s Burnside Bridge, then a trash-strewn area where the homeless camped out and addicts got high. Obstacle-by-obstacle, with concrete sometimes hand-mixed, they built a huge skatepark of flowing transitions that still eclipses most city-built skateparks in size and quality.

Hoping to engender goodwill, skaters picked up trash and swept stoops for nearby business owners. They shooed away homeless people and pot smokers. The message was clear: Don’t mess with the park, says Mr. Dahlgren, who sports a large forearm tattoo.

In 1992, a local business owner organized a meeting between Mr. Scott, Mr. Dahlgren and a city commissioner, a meeting that would pave the way for an agreement that legalized the park. Still, Burnside was never made an official city park, and could be shut down at any time. “If we’d learned anything, it was the importance of good relations with the powers that be,” says Mr. Dahlgren.

From 1993 to 2000, the number of U.S. skateboarders doubled to about 10 million, according to the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association. Mr. Scott made a business out it: He is now president of Dreamland Skateparks, a skatepark builder.

As skateboarding exploded, Portland’s skaters began lobbying for more parks, and for a say in how they were built. One was Tom Miller, who had moved from Seattle to attend law school and later started a non-profit organization called Skaters for Portland Skateparks. The city later set up a skatepark committee that included Mr. Miller, Mr. Dahlgren and Dean Dickinson, a BMX bike rider. The panel pushed for concrete parks designed by skaters, rather than the plastic obstacles many cities were buying from playground equipment companies more familiar with swingsets than skateparks.

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Bryce Kanights for The Wall Street Journal

Tom Miller, a skateboard advocate and the mayor’s chief of staff, in Portland.

But the group also suggested something so bold Mr. Miller says he was almost embarrassed to propose it: a citywide skatepark system. Mr. Miller’s skatepark lobbying led to a volunteer position with the campaign of Sam Adams, who was running for city commissioner. Mr. Adams won the election, and Mr. Miller became an insider: He was offered a job as chief of staff. A few months later Portland’s city council approved a plan to create the skatepark system.

Of course, beyond advocacy, the skatepark system owes a debt to Portland’s activist political culture. Skateboarding isn’t a hard sell in a place where everyone from cyclists to amateur farmers has lobbied the city. The system also coincided with the growth of skateboarding nationally. Mr. Adams, now Portland’s mayor, says the power of his city’s skate community comes mostly from the sport’s growing numbers. “Portland’s parks department was pumping out services that were based on antiquated views,” he says.

Mr. Miller has gone far beyond his roots as a skateboard advocate whose first brush with the City Council came when he put on a suit and testified about skateparks. He rose to chief of staff in the mayor’s office after Mr. Adams was elected last year. Mr. Miller emphasizes that “99.999%” of his job is dealing with higher-priority matters. Still, he has remained a pro-skateboarding voice in a difficult budget environment.

A year ago Mr. Miller got $50,000 from the city council for a feasibility study of the downtown skateboard park that aims to be the jewel of the skatepark system. He has also ruffled some feathers. Mr. Miller has publicly opposed letting BMX bikes into skateparks, citing the risk of biker/skater collisions. That move has drawn the ire of BMX bike riders. “It’s almost like skaters are the cops now,” says Mr. Dickinson, the BMXer.

Since the passage of the skatepark system plan Portland has built five skateparks in the past four years. Most are woven into existing city parks, and are among the most popular attractions there. On a recent afternoon the Gabriel skatepark was filled up with skaters ranging in age from grade school to late 30s, while nearby volleyball courts sat empty.

Of course, some skateboarders will always seek out the new and the illegal. On a recent afternoon 14-year-old Daniel Ciochina and some friends left the concrete ramps at Portland’s Holly Farm skatepark, rolling past a “No Skateboarding” sign into the parking lot of a library across the street. Mr. Ciochina used his board to jump across a gap between one library parking lot and another. A library staffer came out but before she could shoo them the kids were already riding away—back to the safety of their skatepark.

Write to Conor Dougherty at conor.dougherty@wsj.com