History of the Glenhaven design.

I served on the selection committee and read all the proposals for the Glenhaven skatepark in northeast Portland, Oregon. Dreamland Skateparks’ proposal was the clear favorite of the committee, even though there was a street skating faction that didn’t believe that Dreamland could build a good street park. The committee pared the field to three firms who would be interviewed but in the end only Dreamland was properly licensed to do work in the state of Oregon. Grindline’s license had expired and NewLine didn’t have the proper licenses in the first place.

Here is the original Dreamland proposal for Glenhaven. This was actually one of three designs originally proposed for Pier Park. During the Pier Park process there was a lot of static from street skaters about the designs being favored by Skaters for Portland Skateparks. This of course pissed off the guys who had spent three years doing public outreach and fundraising and lobbying.

The funding was available and we knew Dreamland was going to build the thing, all we needed was a design that would please everyone.

I have posted a lengthy rememberance of the project with many of the design drawings I did between February and April 2006 over on Antigravity Press. You’ve seen some of it if you went to any of the meetings but I wanted to put it all together. Hard to believe I did all that a year ago.