Today, the City Council’s Parks Committee will be voting on whether to recommend the couil cut a deal with the Seattle Center Fun Forest’s current operators. The deal would lower the amusement park’s rent in exchange for ending their lease in 2009. The current lease expires in 2014.

Well, a private consultant—working with ex-theme park executives and developers—says he’s been courting the Center for a year, and wants to build a new amusement park at the site. The consultant, John Sutherland—who previously worked on a failed $100 million Lakewood theme park project, and started a mountain bike center in Snoqualmie Pass—says one of his top priorities, if he gets the site, is to incorporate a skatepark into the Fun Forest.

The city’s been struggling to relocate the SeaSk8 skatepark—which used to sit just east of the Center—and neither skaters nor Seattle Center festival promoters are happy with the Pavilion site near Key Arena, which the council chose in August.

Richard Conlin, who’s on the parks committee, says he doesn’t want to revisit the SeaSk8 relocation process unless skaters are willing to enter the fray. Ryan Barth, chair of the Parks Department’s Skate Park Advisory Committee (SPAC) says SPAC is more than willing to restart the relocation process if it means skaters get a bigger and less expensive site. The Pavilion site is estimated to cost $2.9 million for 8,500 square feet of skateable space.