When I first saw this article I was slightly shocked. If you’ve never been to Crater Lake, it is truly a beautiful, pristine, and stunning National Park. A skatepark would definitely be an incongruous intrusion. Yes, I was definitely against building a skatepark! It just made no sense, adding a huge skatepark essentially in the middle of nowhere. The view while skating would be amazing, sure. After I started reading a bit, it seemed a little silly, and when they mentioned sourced “organic concrete” it became more apparent that the article was actually satire. I thought it was real at first, not being familiar with the web site, which it turns out is a an odd mix of the Onion and a tourism site. Enjoy the article Crater Lake’s ‘Volcano Bowl’ Set to Open in 2026 as the World’s Largest Skate Park and if you get a chance, go visit Crater Lake.

Skaters for Eugene Skateparks has posted three video fly-throughs of revised design concepts, as well as some still renders. There’s also a feedback form which is accepting comments until November 22nd. They want this to be a destination park, so… feel free to comment, but maybe you could tip them off if you’re not a resident. The videos really help give you a better feel for the design. For instance, I was more likely to vote in favor of the weird flower bowl until I saw the way the outer walls were considerably higher than the inner ones. The video really helped see how it might ride out better than just viewing the overhead view. Fly-throughs should be mandatory for all skatepark proposals. I imagine in the not too distant feature we will be embedding the models in web pages directly, allowing users to drag the point of view wherever they want. Check it out.. – Thanks to Sarib Khalsa for the tip.

Three Dreamland design concepts have been unveiled for the newest Eugene, Oregon skatepark. One looks pretty straightforward, while the other two have unusual elements either in the park design or some strange sculptural elements. I’m not sure what’s going on there with the giant duck and the prehistoric swimming dinosaur. A dino-duck? College mascot homage? The intersting thing is that most of the square footage is covered by a bridge. You can find some background information, download some pdf’s of the layouts and take a survey on the designs at Downtown Eugene KVAL. If you just want to see the designs then stick around after the jump. I’ve also doctored up some overlays that do a better job of showing you what part is covered.

The six companies bidding on Eugene, Oregon’s “destination” skatepark have been whittled down to two, Dreamland and Grindline, according to our source at Spohn Ranch, of all places. The field used to contain American Ramp Company, California Skateparks, Pillar Design Studios and Spohn Ranch. Did you know that “skate park work is specialized?” Well apparently I did, because they asked me a bunch of questions for the Daily Journal of Commerce. One of the many things they left out of the article was the notion that 18,000 square feet isn’t really large enough to be considered a destination park. That’s about two thirds of the size of Newberg, or Orcas Island if anyone is counting. In any case, the project should break ground some time in 2010 if all goes well, but i don’t think they’ve raise all the money yet, so we’ll have to see how that goes. – Thanks to Hays Hitzing for the tip.