Comment: Etnies, Fretnies
Commentary by Rick Reiff
Lake Forest recently sold the naming rights to a skate park
, its
building to Etnies, the hometown maker of skateboard shoes, for $100,000.
You’d expect this sort of public-private partnership, similar to naming-rights deals that have gone before it in San Clemente, Huntington Beach, Garden Grove, Anaheim and many other towns, to be applauded for helping to defray the cost to taxpayers of providing recreation.
Alas, there are always spoilsports. The L.A. Times found Lake Forest “has taken corporate deals to a new level,” apparently because it has given Etnies “exclusive use of the public land at certain times.” (Lake Forest Assistant City Manager Mark Pulone said the deal does not include such a provision. However, Pulone said the city is entertaining the idea of allowing the company’s professional boarders to take over the park during down times, such as when kids are in school. Pulone admitted the city is working with Etnies and other companies to create a “world class” skate park, and is encouraging Etnies’ pro boarders, who have a fan following, to use the park; he said kids will react with the same enthusiasm as if the Angels were working out at a local baseball diamond.)
If anyone in Lake Forest is upset with the Etnies deal, the Times didn’t quote them. But the paper found a Naderite in Portland, Ore. who was troubled with the arrangement, as well as a USC marketing professor who decried this new example of rampant marketing. OC Weekly also chimed in, rebuking Lake Forest for “putting corporations before people.”
I suppose we should return to government as usual, where parks get named after politicians who don’t pay a dime.
, Rick Reiff
