What do you do when you are a teenager who enjoys skateboarding but you live in a downtown highrise, the sport is prohibited in the surrounding streets and police patrol cars roam the area busting any kids who dare to flout the law?
That’s the unenviable position that 14-year-old Dustin Domer and other teenagers who live on the New East Side find themselves in. Domer, who lives in an older highrise by the lake, has to hop on his bike, and take his skateboard all the way down to a facility at 35th Street.
He says that kids who break the law have been reprimanded and even cited by the police, who monitor the situation closely.
The area that Domer lives in, at Wacker Drive and Lake Shore Drive, is evolving rapidly. Nearby is the 28-acre Lakeshore East development, where some 10, 000 to 15,000 residents will be moving in over the next few years.
The area already has a dog park and a children’s playground, but with all these new residents flooding in, they need to think about the teenagers and give ’em a skatepark.