When it comes to skate parks, Philadelphia gets small

It has been nearly a decade since city officials booted skateboarders from their hallowed ground at John F. Kennedy Plaza, where the glossy granite ledges lured enthusiasts from around the world and became home to the city's street-skating scene.

LOVE Park's replacement, a skate park along the Schuylkill River Trail called Paine's Park, is closing in on its $5 million fund-raising goal, but is still a ways off. In the meantime, community organizers and skateboarders are pairing to build smaller, pocket skate parks across the city.

The successful launch last summer of Pop's Skatepark, a pint-size place built by volunteers who transformed a run-down block in Kensington into a magnet for youths and parents, attracted notice from community organizations. Similar parks are now planned for weedy playground lots in Southwest and West Philadelphia.

"Pop's Playground was a recreation space that was kind of forgotten about, kind of neglected, and people came together and they put their sweat equity to it," said Paulette Adams, an outreach coordinator for the People's Emergency Center, a group hoping to bring skate space to the Mantua section of the city. "It became a totally different feel, and now it's a strong community base right there."

This month, builders plan to rehab the graffiti-covered Whitehall Skatepark at Carmella Playground in Northeast Philadelphia, a spot built in 2001 when the city was host to the X Games. Jesse Clayton, the mastermind behind the design at Pop's Park, will add two ledges and a half-pyramid at the site, and spruce up the half-pipe and other obstacles already there.

The project, estimated to cost about $10,000, will be fully financed by Franklin's Paine Skatepark Fund, a nonprofit organization with the goal of expanding skate space in the city. Pop's, a $25,000 project, was funded by a grant from skateboard legend Tony Hawk and money cobbled together by skateboarding and community groups.

"I think everyone knows what position the city's in: The city's broke," said Clayton, 28, of Langhorne. "Their first priority shouldn't be to go around building skate parks. People got to jump in, people got to see a need for it."

Franklin's Paine and local community groups have proposed two more pocket parks, one in the Mantua section of West Philadelphia and another at McCreesh Playground in the Mount Moriah district of Southwest Philadelphia.