FULLERTON : City Might Not Just Let This Slide

Corey Barr, 9, barely paused before throwing himself down a 110-foot concrete slide in Gilman Park in northeast Fullerton. Seated on a plastic tray, Corey shot down the curving slide and spun out at the sandy bottom, laughing.

“There’s no slides by our house like this,” said Corey, who came from Yorba Linda with three other children and their mother.

There may soon be no slide at Gilman Park either, since the City Council will consider at its 7:30 meeting tonight a recommendation that the slide be removed.

Some consider the slide too dangerous. Paula Chu Tanguay, the city’s risk manager, said a claim was made against the city Nov. 10 on behalf of a boy who said that he went down the slide, caught his foot and broke his leg. Tanguay said the city is self-insured and could someday face a major lawsuit from injuries received on the slide.

In addition, neighbors such as Kim Housewright complain that the thrilling slide attracts teen-agers at night who drive drunk on their lawns, throw bottles at houses and steal trash cans.

“The slide is a focus for a lot of dangerous nighttime activities,” Housewright said.

City maintenance workers and police confirm evidence of the teen-age high jinks.

Lt. Jeff Roop said young adults have been arrested in the park at night and some have been found drinking alcohol, sliding and yelling. Roop said youths tell officers the slide is what draws them to the park, which is closed after dusk. Roop said the park is difficult to patrol, since there is no paved vehicle access.

Maintenance workers also say the carousing teens have left broken bottles in the sand at the foot of the slide.

If the council bans the slide, some say it would be a sad commentary on how times have changed since the park was opened in 1979.

Rene Seablom, who brought Corey Barr to the park, disagreed that the slide brings trouble. She grew up near the park, and remembers when it was an undeveloped ravine.

“It used to be where everybody went for fights, or to make out,” Seablom said. “The park kind of opened it up to the families.”

To Patricia Burk, a neighbor who helped design the park in 1974, the slide is one of the last of the challenging pieces of playground equipment at the park; most have been removed by the city.

The 13.7-acre park won a state award for creative design when it opened after five years of planning and construction. It originally had a treehouse with a rope net to climb, a cable ride that ran between two trees, a suspension bridge and a bicycle motocross trail.

Tito Duarte, city landscape superintendent, said most of the original equipment, which was made of wood, rotted and had to be removed.

The council will consider tonight a proposal by the Community Services Commission to remove the slide and add more lights and bigger signs that warn against nighttime entry. The commission also recommended buying new play equipment, such as a tire swing and a springboard.

Jan Hobson, superintendent of the Community Services Department, said the challenging equipment, such as the cable ride, was an innovative idea in the 1970s, but in today’s world of lawsuits, it’s just too dangerous.

“We have to be realistic about what’s going on in society,” Hobson said. “We want to be able to create that unique, challenging atmosphere, but there are certain things you have to take into consideration.”