Glendale skate park becoming a popular filming location

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Glendale’s Verdugo Skate Park is seeing a bump in its popularity as a filming location, city officials say.

‘Film permits are definitely going up,’ said Gabrielle Goglia, the city’s community services supervisor. ‘We’ve been seeing a lot more requests coming in since July.’ Companies shooting commercials, magazine spreads and movies have recently rented out the park, which most prominently has been used as a location for the TV drama ‘Bones’ and a Hyundai ad.

The hope is the fees paid to film at the park can help make a dent in Glendale’s yawning budget gap, the Glendale News-Press reported. The city introduced a slew of new fees in August for skaters to use the park, located at 1621 Cañada Blvd.

In the latest fiscal year, the city made about $65,000 from film permits at park, with about 42% of that coming from renting the skate park, according to a city report released this week. The next most popular park locations for film shoots are the fields at the Glendale Sports Complex and Stengel Field.

When the makers of Brad Pitt’s ‘Moneyball’ rented Stengel Field to film the 2011 baseball biopic, they also paid to keep the nearby skate park closed so the area would be quiet.

Commercials and photo shoots are most common at the skate park, but some professional and student filmmakers also pull permits for the venue.

In addition to Cosmopolitan shooting a magazine spread there recently, Hyundai filmed a Super Bowl commercial with skaters doing tricks at the park, which features bowls, a kidney pool and a street plaza with rails and ledges, Goglia said.

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-- Brittany Levine, Times Community News