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.