Users and supporters of a skate park in Vancouver’s Mount Pleasant neighbourhood rallied at the facility on Sunday ahead of a park board meeting that could determine its future.

Amid chants of “save our skate park,” dozens of skaters performed tricks and practiced their technique, and dozens more cheered them on.

Rob Boyce, a former professional skateboarder, summarized the perspective of the assembled masses:

“It’s a great community park,” he said. “They’re thinking of shutting this park because of overuse. I don’t know if they’ve ever shut a park because of overuse before, but it seems a little ludicrous.”

Neighbours of the skate park at 16th Avenue and Ontario Street have complained about the noise made by its users, particularly late at night.

Vancouver’s Board of Parks and Recreation installed a 10-foot fence around the park and sends its park rangers to lock up the facility between 9 p.m. and 9 a.m., but such measures have so far failed to slow the stream of noise complaints.

“It’s a concern that’s gone back a number of years,” park board chair John Coupar told CTV News. “Our staff have been working really hard with the community to try and mitigate some of the complaints.”

On Monday, the board will hold a public hearing at 7 p.m. on options for the future of the park. These include altering it to make it less appealing to non-beginners or removing it entirely and replacing it with either grass or another undetermined alternative.

The board will also consider opening a new, intermediate skill-level skate park in nearby Jonathan Rogers Park.

While those at the rally on Sunday welcomed the idea of both the current park and the new park staying open, Coupar said he doesn’t see that as an option.

“We wouldn’t have two skateboard parks nine blocks apart,” he said. “I think the decision is really are we going to proceed with the new park or are we going to modify the existing park?”

For Sarah Blyth, a former park board chair who was at the rally to save the skate park, that’s not the right approach. Closing the skate park would be bowing to pressure from a relatively small group of vocal opponents in the neighbourhood, she said.

“This sets a precedent which is actually quite scary for young people because it says if a few people don’t like something, then we’ll just rip it out,” Blyth said. “This is totally insane, that they would think that this was a good idea to even discuss this.”

For Coupar, however, that’s always the balancing act the park board must deal with. Different groups have different interests, and it’s the job of the board to consult with all of them and attempt to make the right decision.

In some cases, the board has to admit it was wrong, he said.

“When the consultation was done around that skateboard park in that area, in terms of what did the neighbourhood want, the skateboard park finished 15 out of 15 things,” Coupar said. “So when it was built, it wasn’t because people were listening to the concerns of the neighbourhood. It was built for another reason, and I don’t know why that jumped to the top of the list.”

Regardless of whether building the park in its current location was the right decision, it’s there now, and Rob Boyce would like it to stay.

“This is a great beginner park,” he said. “We really need this for the kids.”

And the proposed new park just a few blocks away? He’d love to see that one built too.

“We’ll take as many parks as we can get.”