Dreams of a halfpipe

Dreams of a halfpipe

If you see these two ladies in the little space of green near the Walnut Street train station in Montclair, watch out. Chances are they’ll thrust a clipboard in your face and give you an earful about plans to build a skateboard park in the park there.

One might be inclined to see it as another NIMBY issue, but if you stand there for just half an hour in the evening rush hour you’ll hear so many trains coming through that the thought of adding skateboard noise to the mix could give you a headache.

Erie Park — a small, almost unnoticeable, triangle of green bordered by Label St., Christopher St. and the railroad tracks — is currently the Erie_park_maptop choice for locating the Montclair skateboard park being planned in a public-private initiative.

“Erie Park has been considered the best potential site because it is centrally located in town for the kids who largely get themselves to these kinds of places and since the site … would not be in a heavily residential neighborhood,” Mayor Remsen told us.

Heavily residential it may not be, but people do live there — and they feel the burden of many other non-residential activities: a baseball field, the farmer’s market, PAWS, the West Essex Rehabilitation Center, Midtown Direct. “We feel that we have enough going on in this neighborhood,” said Dawn Candy.Park_with_bubble
“Dogs run here, people play soccer here. This is the only green there is,” said Regine Flimlin, Candy’s companion in opposing the skatepark location.