ニ
EXPANSION JOINT
A toast to
Up
TEMECULA
Top: The cat without the hat, Chad Muska sails over the friendly seas.
Above: An overview of the more than grindable quarter-pipe wall and reservoir area.
20 THRASHER
Front
We get at least 10 calls per week from people flapping about
their city's skatepark needs, so when architect Alan Fishman
called one evening about a skatepark being proposed for the City
of Temecula, California, I was neither surprised nor impressed.
However, his level of enthusiasm and the scale of the park being
proposed was unlike anything that had ever crossed my desk.
They were not just asking stupid questions about insurance,
acquiring land and holding skate demos to raise money. They
had cash and property and the tractors were practically idling
and ready to start.
Temecula, California, is situated on Interstate 15 in the desert.
between LA and San Diego and within an hour's drive of about 12
million people. It's an upper scale 'burb of sprawling homes and
grand golf courses. When the city fathers called for a skatepark,
they didn't fool around. From the mayor on down to the youngest
little street boarders being busted for grinding curbs behind Target,
the whole town rallied around the project. The mayor and his staff
flew to the Bay Area for a tour of the Northern California
skateparks, seeing firsthand examples of what NOT to build. They
saw EMB and other street spots of San Francisco. I visited Temecula
5 times to attend meetings with parents, skaters, architects, police
officers, city planners, rollerbladers, merchants and the local skate
shop owner. There were battles over everything from lighting and
admissions fees to hours of operation and safety equipment
requirements. To their credit, Temecula was committed to moving
forward and finishing their park and that's what they did. They
approached the idea with the intent of building a world-class
facility, not just a dinky rink like Huntington Beach and Davis, CA,
and others have ended up with.
of
From the first designs that landscape architect Alan Fishman
and I scratched in the dirt at the site (across from the high school in
the Rancho California Sports Park), through three site changes and
numerous design tweaks and twists, it took just over two years to
complete the Temecula Skatepark. It features a 60' diameter bowl
that is 6 feet deep with a fat hip on one side and a pyramid-like
entry ramp. The bowl is trimmed with metal pipe and a curb
behind the hip. From the bowl there are two separate driveways
lined with cement curbs leading down into a mega "street plaza"
sunken into 4 and 6 foot deep levels surrounded by
banks and transitions, steps and cement railings with a
fun box at one end and a pyramid at the other.
Temecula is the biggest skatepark project completed
North
in North America since the late 1970's. You could
practically fit all the shitty Northern California parks
combined (including Santa Rosa) into the 150 x 200
square foot area that this sprawling skate mecca
occupies. There has never been a public skatepark
built in the US on such a grand scale to rival the likes
of public facilities in Europe and Australia. At press
time the cement work had just been completed
(immediately 20 skaters showed up to skate the fresh
"green" concrete), and the city was planning a late
June grand opening as soon as the landscaping takes
root. Temecula stands as a better blueprint for the
future than weak skatepark efforts put forth by cities
shackled with liability concerns, sluggish politics and
park designers who have never seen modern skating.
Props given to the Temecula skaters and their
parents for pushing this one through and the team of
Shawn Nelson, Phyllis Ruse, Alan Fishman and JF
Davidson for a job well done.
PER
WL
-Kevin Thatcher
28.10.
Consolidated Business News: 1996
Consolidated Incorporated
Pie Chart:
GMAS
Consolidated and Other Co.'s
Other Co.'s
Lately we've been hearing a lot of
complaining about how many
small companies there are.
There's even been "industry
meetings" to figure out what to do
about the "future of our sport."
We can't figure out what they're
talking about. There seems to be
enough for everyone. Didn't
mommy teach them to share?
CONSOLIDATED INCORPORATED
1840 41st Ave. 102-134 Capitola, CA 95010
phone408.457.8206 fax408.457.8219
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