Millworks owners at wit's end over skate park entrance

Millworks from the entrance to the skate Park.

The entrance to the skate park from the bike path.

According to Millworks President Ellen Hoover, users of the skate park have been vandalizing the company’s property ever since the park was constructed. The main problem in her view is the location of the entrance to the park on the bike path, not far from the Millworks building that is most frequently the target of graffiti artists and vandals. She addressed the issue in an email she sent to the Village Council, Village Manager and Village Economic Sustainability Coordinator last week. The message included much of the history of the stormy relationship between the recreation area and one of the village’s most important business spaces.

Millworks recently painted the walls on the troubled building, Hoover wrote. Once the project was finished, she called the police dispatcher to notify them.

“In not more than 24 hours, the wall was vandalized with paint,” she wrote. “We will repaint it (once again) but it is time to move the skate park entrance.”

Hoover points out that Millworks has played a strong role in attracting new and retaining existing businesses to Yellow springs, “primarily because we are willing to keep improving the space for business needs.” The buildings that have been subjected to graffiti and vandalism are either not rented or under-utilized. They would like to upgrade them to market to new and solid businesses. However, the graffiti and vandalism make that difficult and leave them wondering how much more to invest in them.

“Frankly, we are tired of trying to beautify and upgrade our property while being told by the Village to be patient about the skate park issues,” Hoover wrote.

In the past, Millworks, which is jointly owned by Rod and Ellen Hoover and Sandy Love and Sam Young, originally asked that the steps to the proposed skate park not be placed off the bike path. Later, they asked that the gates be moved and the steps removed so that the vandals would have less opportunity to damage their property. According to Hoover, last year, council directed the Village Manager to move the gate, but it didn’t happen. Since then, the vandalism has increased and spread.

“First, we were told (last year) that it would be best to do this with construction of the cell tower, but the gates are still there,” she wrote. “Then we were told this had to go through Human Relations council, but only one meeting has been called in the past year. It was poorly attended by the skate park stakeholders, but well attended by property owners and Village staff, who cited problems beyond Millwork's issues. The promised second meeting (to get more buy in) never happened and hasn't been attempted to our knowledge. Then we were told to post no trespassing signs, which we did (twice because of vandals who stole the signage). We were also told to post no painting signs, which we did and which they painted over.”

According to Hoover, they have been told they can't be sure the vandalism is from the skate park. However, she says, the vandals the Police did manage to catch have been skate park users. She points out that identical graffiti that is on Millworks is also usually found on the steps. Prior to the construction of the skate park, the target building was not subjected to graffiti.

She says, they were told to make one of the sides of the building into a “public paint wall.” They tried that, “but vandals insisted on painting beyond the borders, breaking windows, breaking out security lights, throwing trash, and damaging anything possible.”

“Please - we have done everything we can to invest in keeping the property sound and we have done everything staff has asked,” Hoover wrote. “Now do what was directed by council last year and move the entrance gates.”