Evergreen Skateparks recently broke ground on a 4500 square foot skatepark in Happy Valley, Oregon. I can’t find a design for this anywhere, and most of the pictures that turn up in a Google Image search are old concepts attributed to Newline that appeared here on S&A back in 2009. Newline still has revised plans on their website. What happened is anyone’s guess, but Oregonians are happy to keep it local.

About a million years ago (10 or so, actually) I did a write up of concrete skateparks in the greater Chicagoland area for a pre-blog print issue of S&A. It was pretty dismal, especially coming from a Northwest perspective. In most cases the design or finish were flawed, often times both. Most spots weren’t built by actual skatepark builders. Some have expansion joints where the transition meets the flat, filled with whatever soft goo they use on sidewalks. Some even have brushed cement. That’s not to say you couldn’t have fun in those parks, because you are skateboarding after all. Since that time, Chicago got an adequate, professional, but not especially exciting park on Wilson, plus a prefab junker on Logan, and think some other satellite parks in the burbs, but again, nothing to write home about. Who knows, (I don’t) maybe there are a other new parks in the area that I don’t know about. Admittedly, I’m going on old information, although I did hit some more suburban spots in 2009. This new skatepark in Villa Park by Portland’s Evergreen Skateparks has a small-ish footprint, so it’s kind of hard to dazzle, but still it’s got to be a step forward for the state of Illinois. Hopefully this will open the door for other build/design projects in the area. Maybe not though, I heard Evergreen ran into some Union problems on the site, with picketing and what not. That’s Chicagoland for you. Big shoulders extend all the way to the burbs. We’re da Machine! Getting back to Evergreen, here’s another slick helicopter-dogcam edit from Robert Mcintosh. Bonus Effigies audio for “We’re da Machine” after the jump.

Someone in Portland is getting one hell of a skate spot in their backyard with help from Evergreen Skateparks, as seen on Facebook.

The Evergreen Skateparks crew is cruising on a good looking project in Modiin, Israel that will be the country’s largest skatepark. While researching this post I got totally distracted by their unusual promo footage featuring a rad little dog. The promo footage was already pretty damned cool, and logo montage at the very end is the icing on the concrete cake. Some of those guys on the crew look familiar…

Transworld Business has an interview with Billy Coulon of Evergreen Skateparks, the man/entity behind the huge concrete boom at Windells.