On a warm weekday afternoon, a 19-year-old Issaquah man sat on his skateboard outside the Issaquah Skateboard Park, taking a break before leaving for work. He actually uses the park for the purpose of skating. Yet the park has become notorious for not-so-savory activity after dark — a secluded haven for drug use and homeless youths.

“I feel like most of the people who do drugs down here don’t use the skate park,” the young man, who did not want to be identified, said.

With it’s secluded location, adjacent to the Rainier Trail, between Issaquah Middle School and Issaquah and Tiger Mountain High Schools, he said it draws kids from both sides and has become a common meeting ground.

Although hard drug use has been identified in the area of the skateboard park, the young man said he was only aware of pot smoking.

A survey of Issaquah residents identified need for a parks bond, but constructing a new skate park somewhere else and repurposing the existing site didn’t make the cut on the $10 million bond which will appear on the November ballot.

According to a new proposal created specifically to address the skate park, the city estimates the cost to build a new park and get rid of the existing one will be approximately $350,000. The bill states there are funding sources available through the park mitigation fund, ($200,000), and the real estate excise fund, ($150,000). The bill says if council approves funding, it would move forward with public outreach/input for ideas on where to locate a new skateboard park, and to talk about appropriate amenities for the project.

At the July 1 city council meeting, there was plenty of testimony about the scourge that is the skate park. Anne Moore, who is on the Issaquah School District’s board of directors asked for it to be a priority on the parks bond. She has two children who attend IHS with one who walks to Village Theater from IHS who is uncomfortable walking through the area.

In comparison, the Sammamish skateboard park is right next to city hall, in a bright, lighted area. A Sammamish couple who testified at that same meeting said they were “horrified” by the Issaquah skateboard park. A downtown Issaquah resident said there was a “very interesting culture” near the skate park. He said the skate park has the feel of a deserted building on a bad street.

Judy Brewer is the treasurer of the Issaquah Community Network. ICN’s Drug Free Community Coalition was formed in Sept. 2011, and Brewer said the skate park was the first major project the coalition identified. Members of the coalition were told about the problem by students who had volunteered to be a part of the group.

“They spoke very frankly about it,” Brewer said.

Brewer said they were shocked that the skate park wasn’t included in the park bond.

“I’m not going to throw stones, but this is something we’ve vocalized for some time,” Brewer said. “We were not aware of the public meeting at Pickering Barn (to identify park needs).”

She said the Friday night before the July 1 city council meeting, knowing the skate park wasn’t recommended to be a part of the bond, they gathered over 240 signatures on a petition to relocate the skate park.

“This is a top priority for us in our action plan,” Brewer said.

She said when the skate park was built, she believes the city didn’t want it to be that visible.

“Somewhere after 2002, something changed that was not present in the 90s,” Brewer said. “We’re in a very different time now.”

A time that now includes a shift to the use of heroin becoming popular again, as a result of the increased availability of opioids such as OxyContin. But they are expensive and hard to get. Heroin is cheaper and easy to get.

In April, the coalition held a spring clean event at the skate park and Rainier Trail, clearing 20 bags of garbage that included beer and alcohol bottles, drug paraphernalia and hypodermic needles. In May, it launched the Rainier Trail Walk-Around program. There are now 25 adult volunteers who walk the trail in pairs. Funding for the walker’s training was from a King County grant.

If the city council approves funding, which could happen at its Sept. 3 meeting, after establishing a Citizen’s Advisory Board and holding a series of public meetings among other things, a new skate park could become a reality. Brewer said she thinks the Issaquah School District might even have some money to move the project along. Notes from the services and safety committee meeting July 17 mentions the possibility of partnering with ISD to see if there are potential sites on any of ISD’s properties.

“I will be so surprised if the city doesn’t step up,” Brewer said.