Wormhoudt in San Jose
Wormhoudt has broken ground on a new monster park in San Jose California. Our man on the street, but not necessarily the street course, Larry Pescatore sent us a few shots of the construction. The renders are courtesy of Wormhoudt, or would be if I had asked. If you like the trend of adding distinctive landmark features to an individual park, you’ll be happy to learn there are at least two in this 45,000 square foot park located at Lake Cunningham. Find out what $4,761,800 buys in San Jose after the jump.
Wormhoudt Lake Cunningham Skatepark in San Jose
What do I mean by landmark features? I mean something that is unique to a certain park, or appeared first at a particular park, like Reedsport’s funnel loop, Florence’s doughnut hole, Pier Park’s mouse hole, the helmet in Polson Montana, the Brookings OR Mickey Mouse gap launch, or the poop chute in Irrigon Oregon.
Here’s landmark feature number one, a bizarro vert extension. I’m not sure what the purpose of the escalator, I imagine there will be some insane grinds and lipslides done by someone. Not by me, that’s for sure. The picture immediately below is Larry’s construction shot of the extension. You might even consider the funnel pocket another landmark feature. It reminds me of those ice cream novelties that have a plastic cone filled with ice cream, and a gumball in a perfectly fit pocket at the bottom. What are those called anyway? That’s what the nickname for that feature should be.
Here’s another landmark feature. This slanted full pipe looks like an extended version of the one at Mike Fox park in Santa Cruz. One thing that would make this infinitely more interesting is if the part of the full pipe that extends down to the flat deck were to curve around the pocket of the bowl a little, creating a very nice and very skateable pocket escalator.
This next shot has nothing to do with landmarks. It’s just the kidney bowl under construction, with the overhead layout thrown in for reference.
Here’s the construction site sign. I can’t believe this thing is going to cost $4,761,800! To be fair, $190,000 went to things like feasibility studies and neighborhood meetings. $150,000 went to Environmental Impact Review documents and conceptual designs, and $160,000 went to “construction documents and specifications” (??). That’s a half a million before any digging can begin! City officials say it will likely cost even more since slights and extensive landscaping weren’t included.
There’s a Lake Cunningham Park web site with an article reprinted from the San Jose Mercury that is subscription only on Mercury site. Unfortunately, the site uses frames so you have to look for the unofficial inverted frog logo (see below) and click. Or you can follow this out of context direct link. These renderings below (by Tony Loverde) are from that page. Something I have to bring up, the creator of the graphic doesn’t want anyone “ripping it off.” I’m not sure what that means since it’s really only useful when talking about the Lake Cunningham skatepark. I guess you could replace the text with your own graphics, but who would want to do that?
CREDITS:
Tan renderings: Wormhoudt
Photos: Larry Pescatore
Green and gray renderings: Tony Loverde
Inverted skatefrog*: Mark A Rayner (Don’t rip off his hard work!)
“skatefrog” is the sole artistry and creation of Mark A Rayner and is not the property of the City of San Jose or the temporary or official logo of the Skatepark.
Posted by: kilwag on May 4th, 2007
More posts by kilwag
Categories: Skate, Skateparks
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looks like this could be quite the park
I can’t believe the sides of the extension don’t flow into the rest of the park.
I forgot to mention:
Looks like it will cost $2 to skate, plus parking (!?) Two bucks isn’t bad for skating, even when everything else in the Northwest is free. Paying to park at a skatepark is a completely alien concept.
Also, the cost. Battle Ground spent $2.1 million on a park about half that size, so I guess it’s not completely out of line after all.
Hopefully, for this mega-park these Wormhoudt guys have learned from their mistakes at Louisville. I’ve been to that park many times. The bigger elements have way too much flat bottom. It’s like it’s designed for Bigfoot or somethin. Looks like the big capsule on this park could be that way too in some of the pics.
Ahhh. Wormhoudt. The guy that designed the first phase of Richland’s Washington’s skatepark. He allowed the city to okay the lowest bidder build the park and after complaints from skaters who know what a park should be built like, the City ran off the lowest bidder and had to have half the park jack hammered up and redone by Grindline… Huge waste of money that was donated by a woman who passed away leaving $250,000 for a park to be built for kids. The park ended up costing almost 1,000,000 in the long run. I’m sure he’ll use better park builders for this park, or should I say, I hope he does, for San Jose’s sake.
Battle Ground’s money went into landscaping 4 Baseball feilds and remoldling existing structures.
Check out the manual pads and ledges that but up against the bowl in the first pic. I can’t wait to ride the bowl and eat it because some kid loses control of his board while goofing around on those ledges. Duh!
It will be better then the fight we are having to make for a tiny 4,000 square foot skate park in the City of Capitola. Here’s the latest from our friendly city official.
http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/archive/2007/May/05/local/stories/07local.htm
Looks like we will be showing up at the next meeting May 10 th.
[...] I found the links for this through lurking this entry at Skate and Annoy. That entry being about a 4.7 million (US) dollar park being built in Cali. Eff [...]
Of course you’d rip it. A person with your innate lack of talent and original thought would have no choice but to rip off what you could never hope to create.
Have a happy life… Whatever
I talked to Steve Caballero on KNBR yesterday and he told me he had a hand in the design…I put in my two cents and said i hoped that Wormhoudt doesn’t screw this one up as usual and Cab said he doesn’t think that’ll happen. I trust Cab’s opinion I guess…
Mark Rayner Says: A person with your innate lack of talent and original thought would have no choice but to rip off what you could never hope to create.
Apparently, you sacrificed your sense of humor to get all your talent and original thought.
I’m good with that… I hope you’re ok with sacraficing talent for humor. Could you at least remove my signature from my artwork you defaced and republished?
come on, mark. bring us the next Xtreme amphibian rather than getting huffy, would ya?
yeah, remove his signature from the artwork as he is obviously embarrassed by his own creations.
Duly noted on the artwork.
Congratulations on turning an positive article about your new skatepark into a forum for whining about how you feel victimized. Get your ego in check and learn to have a chuckle about yourself. Lighten up.
all hail kilwag
awl hale kilwag
ahh hell kilwag
I don’t even know what Mark is getting all pissy about. What’s the beef here? What did kilwag say that got you ranting about his “lack of talent and original thought”?
In the last paragraph where I mention that he fervently doesn’t want people “ripping off his hard work” – the frog logo, I link to a version that I “ripped off” as a joke. He doesn’t find it amusing.
gotcha. But it’s a frog doing an invert. Hardly groundbreaking stuff. Certainly not worth get bent out of shape about.
didn’t you know artist are sensitive people?
I hate to sound ungrateful for the cities efforts and financing this project, but I feel this whole thing is misguided.The skaters of San Jose would be much better served with more neighborhood parks than this huge park. Different parks offering different terrain around the city is the way to go. $6.00 to park plus $2 to ride? Forget casually meeting your friends at the park to just skate.
$2 isn’t outrageous, but paying to skate is already a buzzkill, $6 to park? Bummer. Aren’t most of the public skate parks there (Cali) pay-to-play? They probably don’t charge you to use a basketball court… It likely means there will be supervision (gotta pay that guy) and overly restrictive time regulations (closed on holidays, school hours)
Ironic that the state that supposedly invented skateboarding just doesn’t seem to “get it” when it comes to public skateparks. That’s the difference in how they see things in California vs other places like Oregon and Washington.
full pie entry now looks like this
sorry image is not showing up. just cut and paste to check it out. Thanks to Tony Loverde once again for the rendering.
you guys are wack. If you dont wanna pay dont go. Its cheaper and better than vans was anyways. Also they said at a meeting that they will have a year pass sort of thing for people who are gonna go alot, like me.
yeah kilwag, you’re wack.
I don’t wanna pay. I ain’t going.
wack wack wack wack wackity wack.
Whatever the hell that means.
I don’t see how the Monolith thing is going to get ANY love, except as a big flat extension. That just seems like a visual “landmark” as K calls it. BUT, the park definitely looks like fun.
However, I agree with Cold that several smaller parks, spread out around the city would be much better. Even every element of this park, just chopped up properly and in different parts of town. Just like basketball, and tennis courts. But unfortunately, cities want skaters in one place where they can have the illusion of control. They still don’t understand…
I saw the Santa Cruz park getting built. People do contribute to their designs, but I talked to the contractors they don’t know shit about skateboarding, or design build flow.
I think they are good at concrete work, maby just not skatepark work.
Yep, I am sure they underbid everybody.
Looks large but, I wanna skate across a park so big I gotta take a break/rest on top of a fullpipe, before skateboarding to get to the other side which would take like a couple minutes, yeah?.
how sick would it be if one corner of the park was dedicated to the spots that kept the San Jo scene alive over the years and featured replicas of them, such as the bedrock ramp, the pisshole, the tan bark ditches and the alpha beta curbs?
…and San Fran gets a Grindline! If I’m rolling through that part of California, straight to Grindline. I don’t have too much faith in surfers designing parks built by non-skaters.
I know Chris Cook had a say in Pacifica but that park still falls short of the quality up North. Hopefully Cab will be in there with a trowel, otherwise???
CONSTRUCTION DOCUMENTATION TAKES A LONG TIME, WITH ENDLESS REVISING. THE NUMBER OF PEOPLE WHO REVIEW, COMMENT, CHANGE, AND REVISE THE CONSTRUCTION DOCUMENTS IS ENDLESS. INSURANCE, AND ALL THE SUBS WHO DO THIER PARTS OF THE PLANS ARE COSTLY AS WELL. EVERY WALL NEEDS TO BE ENGINEERED, SO AN ENGINEER NEEDS TO DO A STUDY, AND STAMP IT. HE TOO HAS TO PAY A COSTLY INSURANCE, HENCE CHARGING A SHITLOAD.
“The Whack Pearl”
I love the park and the drop ins are fun!
the park is fun but the sment is not leveld
i think we should pay because it is fair
[...] Northern Ca Sessions – Wormhoudt in San Jose open next spring! biggest in the Bay! Check out Benicia if you are in the east bay. Northern [...]
gunna be da sickest park ever.
and 89 live across da street wo0t
2 dollers, its not a lot but every other sk8 prk, even being that big is still freeee!!! Not every one has money…even if its 2 bucks. You’d be suprised..sounds Greedy, greedy, greedy ta me.!
The skate park is fun and awsome and i love droping in over there
[...] we had construction pictures of San Jose’s Lake Cunningham skatepark out the wazoo, and then some, but nobody cares about that once the park is open, especially when you [...]