Catching the Concrete
Wave: Skate Park at Mike Fox Park, Santa Cruz, Calif.
by Amy Johnson
At
first, skateboarding and decorative acid-stained concrete
may not seem to have much in common, but think freedom,
creativity, passion - sheer love of the art - and you'll
see the two were meant for each other.
In 1974, Wormhouch Inc. built the world's first public
skate park in Santa Cruz, Calif. So it was fitting that
more than two decades later, the city of Santa Cruz
went back to the experienced firm for a new skate park
inside Mike Fox Park. Architect and skater Zach Wormhoudt
was not put off by the 10 years it took to bring this
park to life. "There is a lot of community participation
in a project like this, including a lot of outreach
to skaters," he says.
Zach Wormhoudt, who has designed a hundred skate parks
all over the world, took over this project after the
death of its the original architect, his father Ken
Wormhoudt.
Long before construction began, Wormhoudt had been
thinking about how to color the park. He had worked
with Tom Ralston, owner of Tom
Ralston Concrete in Santa Cruz, to have accents in
an earlier park acid-stained, and together they thought
it was time to bring this technique to an entire project.
But first there had to be concrete to stain. AJ. Vascom
General Engineering, of Concord, Calif., won the bid
to build the park as well as engineer and pour the concrete.
Wormhoudt had worked with Andy Vascom, president and
founder, on Vasconi's first skate park in 1999, and
this partnership was vital to the success of the Santa
Cruz project.
Vasconi was a civil engineer who began his career working
with a bridgebuilding contractor. After he started his
own small firm, while building up the capital required
to get back into building bridges, he took on smaller
concrete projects and soon gravitated to skate parks
where he could use his engineering background. In fact,
Vascom has completed 20 skate parks in the past eight
years, and the parks account for about one-third of
his business every year.
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