RANCHO PENASQUITOS -- The Rancho Penasquitos Skatepark has reopened to mixed reviews, with some users wondering where the rest of their park went.

"It's still fun, but basically, they took out half the park," said Rancho Penasquitos resident Marty Laracy, 17. "But we improvise."

The $2.1 million skatepark at Carmel Mountain Road and Freeport Road was closed for five months as San Diego city officials tried to figure out why wooden structures at the 4-year-old facility were falling apart. The park reopened June 30 after workers removed the dilapidated wooden ramps, half-pipes and other structures.

Clay Bingham, deputy director of the San Diego Parks and Recreation Department, said the city has plans to replace the structures. For now, skaters still can speed down the remaining concrete slopes, but there's only wide open space waiting for them at the bottom instead of the banks and ramps they used to ride up.

That can get old. One youngster at the skatepark on Thursday hinted that some of his friends are considering bringing their own wood, hammers and nails to the park to make their ramps.

But good things may be coming to skaters who wait, according to Bingham.

"There's an opportunity that there may be some additional things added to replace the lost structures," he said. The city also is likely to build the new structures with a material stronger than wood, he said.

But first, city engineers are looking into what went wrong with the original parts. Bingham said the wood was delaminated and fasteners holding down boards appeared to be too small, and city officials are trying to track down the builder to ask about the park's construction.

"It wasn't dangerous, it was just annoying," said Rancho Bernardo resident Max Warford, 16. "You had to skate around random screws laying around. And the wood was rotted, bubbly and wavy."

Skakers and bikers in Rancho Penasquitos on Thursday still agreed that having the park open, even sans some of its ramps, was better than no park.

"I just stopped skating for a while," Laracy said about how he handled the five months when the park was closed. "(The skatepark in) Poway is too far, and I didn't have enough money for gas."

"It's really good, but it's not like it used to be," said Amon Cunningham, 16, of Rancho Penaquitos.

Call staff writer Gary Warth at 760-740-5410.