TAYLORSVILLE — Cody Fasselin and a group of other teenagers grew tired of the city telling them where they could ride their skateboards.
Well, that's still happening, but now these teenagers think it's cool.
Taylorsville will become the first city in Salt Lake County to open a park designed and designated for skateboarders and in-line skaters.
Slated to open at the end of the summer, the 150-by-150-foot park will include jumps and other features designed with skateboarding in mind.
The $150,000 park will be built at Redwood Road and 4775 South as part of the existing Taylorsville Park. If it opens before the school year starts, city officials plan to have a grand opening competition for kids from area schools.
To design the park, the city recruited about 20 to 25 teenagers who board and blade and solicited their input.
Fasselin was one.
"We gave some personal preference for what we wanted," Fasselin, 16, said. "We needed one out here because most of the time, you get kicked out of spots if you are at the schools or the churches."
Taylorsville Mayor Janice Auger says the park is an important service the city should offer.
"In Taylorsville, we have 41 percent of our population who are 18 years and younger," she said. "We've been real good the last several years at telling these kids where they can't skateboard. Kids hear what they can't do, but we should tell them what they can do."
Six months ago, when the city began toying with the possibility, Auger says she was a bit overwhelmed by the frenzied interest of the teenagers.
"The only negative with this park is that it isn't open now, because these kids are chomping at the bit."
One day, she said she arrived home to find a bunch of teenagers waiting for her on her porch to express their desire for the park.
"I didn't even know these kids, but they were just alive with enthusiasm."
Many cities shy away from roller sports parks because of the liability issue.
John Inch Morgan, the city manager, said the city checked into it and discovered if the design was a "moderate" park with jumps no more than 4 feet high, the city's insurance costs wouldn't increase.
The city also cannot charge admission, and the facility must be self-policed.
That part is critical, warned Paul Jensen, Brigham City's superintendent of parks. That city had a bad experience with a similar park until changes were made.
"If Taylorsville takes the steps we didn't at first, like making an effort to be down there, then they shouldn't have the problems we did."
Brigham City's skate park, which opened a little more than a year ago, teetered on the edge of closing because of repeated costly vandalism.
Although the park was popular, attracting teenagers from as far away as West Valley City, Jensen said turf issues erupted and the kids grew destructive.
"It got bad; it was trashy, I have to admit," Jensen said. "We'd plant trees and they'd tear them up. Everything we wanted to do they seemed to want to destroy. Finally, it got to the point that if there wasn't a way to keep it cleaned up, we were going to close it down."
Employees of the parks department began to visit the park on a daily basis.
"We just started talking to the kids, and we let them know it was their skate park, and we told them what we expected them to do. And they told us their expectations, and it was like overnight, it seemed to turn around."
The parks department offered a reward for anyone caught vandalizing the park and discovered it was the locals who were up to mischief.
Jensen said the important thing was to determine who was responsible, not for purposes of prosecution but to get it stopped.
"It's turned out great now. We are even talking about expanding it because it has pulled all that other skateboarding activity out of the other parks and concentrated it in one area they can enjoy. It is theirs and they consider it theirs and they have been doing a real good job of policing it for the last three to four months."
West Valley City appears to be the next city in the Salt Lake County area that will come on board with a skate park.
City Manger John Patterson said the city is in negotiations with a private developer who wants to turn a 4-acre parcel into a BMX track and skate park that will be big enough to include roller derby.
Patterson said the proposal is attractive because the city will lease the land to the private company, which in turn develops the park and assumes the responsibility for it.
Other municipal skate parks include a new facility in Ogden, a 4-year-old park in Farmington and a 6,000-square-foot park that opened in Provo last year.
E-MAIL: amyjoi@desnews.com