Austin Baral launches out of a bowl at the Ott Family YMCA. This is one of three in-ground, poured-concrete skate parks in the area.

Kelly Presnell / Arizona Daily Star

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A skate park is a skate park is a skate park. Not.

Tucson area skaters are up in arms over a city proposal, not yet finalized, to build a modular skate park at Santa Rita Park.

Building a modular park is a betrayal, they say, of years of planning to build an in-ground, poured-concrete skate park that would put Tucson on the skateboarding map. They say it's also a bad investment and inadequate to meet the needs of area skaters.

But for city officials, it's a matter of dollars and sense. A modular park, consisting of metal and plywood ramps bolted to a concrete pad, is less than half the cost of an in-ground park.

At $523,590, even the modular park will cost $100,000 more than the city has now.

City Parks Director Fred Gray said no decision has been made, but he has limited funds.

"At this point, there isn't enough money for either project," he said.

Bonnie Demorotski got the ball rolling in 1999 when she was executive director of Camp Fire USA's Southern Arizona office. A survey of Downtown teenagers showed that a skate park, along with a music venue and a legal place to do graffiti art, would help keep them out of trouble.

"The places skaters ride are Downtown and the U of A, and it's illegal to do trick riding there," said Chris Stagg, a skateboarder and the former project manager for the skate park. "You can transport yourself, but you can't stop and play. It's really a silly reason to end up in the juvenile justice system."

Demorotski met with skaters and park officials to plan what features the park should have and got support from the neighborhood associations around Santa Rita Park, as well as from Councilman Steve Leal and Supervisor Ramon Valadez, who saw the project as a way to clean up a park that's a haven for homeless people.

Camp Fire received a $247,166 community development block grant from the city and $150,000 in neighborhood reinvestment funds from the county. A contractor agreed to take on the project, even though the funds wouldn't cover all the costs.

Then the contractor went out of business, costs rose to almost $1 million and former Parks Director Dan Felix, with whom Demorotski said she had a good relationship, died. Demorotski said Deputy Director Bob Martin, who served as interim director, obviously wasn't interested in the skate park, a charge Martin denies.

But as recently as spring 2004, Leal told the Arizona Daily Star, "If this can't be worked out, they need to take us all out in the desert and leave us out there."

Then Camp Fire left Tucson. The agency that had been the driving force behind the park didn't exist anymore.

Almost seven years later, skaters say the situation still is dire.

"We skate every day, and we get hassled every day," said Charlie Vessell, 18, a senior at Ironwood Ridge High School.

The Tucson area has a small modular park at the Randolph Recreation Complex in Reid Park and three in-ground, poured-concrete skate parks, one in Marana's Continental Ranch, one in Rita Ranch and one at the East Side Ott Family YMCA on Prudence Road. Skaters said these parks are OK, the one at the YMCA is even good, but they're far away.

"We're kids," said skater Bryan Meyer, 17, a senior at Presidio High School. "We don't have gas money."

Leal said the city remains committed to building a skate park.

"It's been important to me to have a skate park," he said last week. "That's why we persisted even after the people who brought it forward failed."

But skaters say they would rather see no park at all than a modular park.

"What we want is the design we worked on," said Erick Nickerson, an architect who started skating two years ago with his son, now 9.

A modular park might work for beginners, they say, but a concrete park with kidney bowls and snake runs provides enough variety that skaters at all levels can ride it and still be challenged.

They also say modular equipment is cheaper up-front but needs more maintenance.

Demorotski, who is no longer with Camp Fire but remains dedicated to the effort she initiated in 1999, said area skaters are willing to raise the money needed to get the park they think Tucson needs. They want the city to build what it can now with the money it has, then post a conceptual drawing to motivate skaters.

Leal said he is willing to look at cost comparisons, though he thinks a modular park isn't a bad idea.

County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry said the county might be able to put $50,000 toward the shortfall for the modular park and may include a poured-concrete skate park at a county park in its 2008 bond package.