Lachlan asked for a skate park 10 years ago. The council is still arguing about it

It has been 10 years since Lachlan Scott and his mother Sarah started a project called Skatercraft to lobby for a skateboarding and recreational facility in eastern Sydney.

On April 8, 2013, an 11-year-old Lachlan stood before a sympathetic Woollahra Council to make his case and present a report compiled by 26 children aged eight to 14 – the “Skaterkids of Paddington”.

Waiting for Woollahra: George Kinahan and Lachlan Scott, right, first worked on the skate park proposal 10 years ago.Credit: Janie Barrett

Since then, there have been six prime ministers, four state premiers and two Summer Olympics. Novak Djokovic has won 15 grand slams and Taylor Swift has toured the world three times.

But a skate park in eastern Sydney has remained in the too-hard basket. For a decade, the idea has been scratched and exhumed, progressed and halted, in a battle that has involved everyone from activist neighbours to prime ministers.

Now a scaled-down “youth recreation area” in Rushcutters Bay Park is back on the agenda, with Woollahra Council debating whether to apply to Heritage NSW for permission to proceed. It would be located in the “under-utilised” south-west corner of the park, near noisy New South Head Road.

The proposed facility, which also includes a basketball court, would take up just 1225sqm of the 54,000sqm in Woollahra Council’s section of the park. There would be no new lighting as it would close at dusk, and a heritage assessment found no significant trees would be affected.

A diagram showing the size and location of the proposed youth recreation area in Rushcutters Bay Park.Credit: Woollahra Council papers

At a committee meeting last week, Liberal councillor Toni Zeltzer lamented that the kids who asked for the facility 10 years ago “have probably got children of their own now”.

Well, not quite, but they have certainly gotten older. The Herald tracked down Lachlan Scott, who is about to turn 21 and in the final semester of an economics degree at the University of Technology, Sydney, and his friend George Kinahan, 20, who was also part of Skatercraft.

Though they rarely skate these days, they are disappointed the idea is yet to eventuate. “The backlash we met, it was actually really disheartening for a lot of us,” says Kinahan, who studies agricultural and environmental economics at Sydney University.

“It feels like at this point it’s going to be something for my own kids, not myself. Kids of that age need an outlet to get outside and get away from their computer screens and get amongst nature.”

It has been nearly 10 years since Lachlan Scott (right), then aged 11, asked Woollahra Council to build a skate park for the kids of Paddington.Credit: Janie Barrett

Scott says the saddest part is how much the original plan has been watered down to make it palatable for the neighbours. “It’s almost no longer a skate park; it has skating elements.”

Over the years, opponents of the ramp have included former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, who, while PM and the member for Wentworth in 2017, said skateboarders should go to Bondi Beach instead.

A project intitiated by Lachlan Scott and his mother Sarah Ryland for the children of Paddington to create a pitch for skate facilities in the local area.

“Adding hard surfaces and concrete structures is not sympathetic to how the park is currently used by its visitors,” Turnbull wrote at the time. “These facilities also raise noise concerns for local residents that neighbour the park.”

The council’s decision to flirt with the skate ramp again has prompted a new wave of community opposition, led by groups such as the Darling Point Society, whose president Charlotte Feldman addressed last Monday’s meeting.

“We want our green open space to remain as is – a beautiful foreshore parkland,” she said. She was also concerned about the structure’s impact on the aeration of surrounding tree roots.

Another local, Sue Hanley, caused a minor stir in a community Facebook group when she lamented that “a small group of privileged Paddington kids want to cover [the grass] with steel and concrete so they can have a skateboard park”.

Hanley, 74, told the Herald the criticism she received in the group was “bloodlust”. “It’s just so savage,” she said. She believes the park is already too heavily geared toward “active recreation” – sports – rather than “passive recreation” such as sitting and reading.

Hanley said eastern suburbs skaters could already access facilities at Bondi, as well as in Redfern, South Eveleigh and Sydney Park within the City of Sydney. She said she would contact individual Greens councillors to ask why they were supporting the proposal despite its alleged heritage and environmental impacts.

Greens councillor Nicola Grieve said a lot of misinformation had been circulated about the plan, which was whipping people into “hysteria”. She said the proposed landscaping was “beautiful” and the facility was important for families who couldn’t afford private exercise classes.

“It’s our job to provide for our constituents,” she told Monday’s meeting. “The youth of Woollahra can’t wait any longer. Let’s get on and do it. We don’t want to be the council of do-nothing.”

The council meeting once again resulted in a stalemate. Residents First councillor Merrill Witt proposed to defer progress on the skate park until a full conservation management plan of the surrounding area was finished, which would delay the project by at least another two years.

Councillors were split 4-4 on whether to proceed, so the entire proposal will be debated at a full council meeting this month.

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