Skatepark Community Design Meeting on Feb 16

AV Skatepark Community Design Meeting

February 16, 2023

6:30pm @ AV High Room 6

We have contracted Frontier Skateparks (read here for more details), a design/build firm out of VA (but with deep roots in CA!), to complete custom design for our skatepark. The design process entails two community meetings in which the designers interact with AV community members to explore future users' preferences and ideas. In this way, we work together to shape our future park. This phase will culminate with a 3-D rendering of our custom-designed skatepark, set in its permanent location, and a more precise cost estimate for construction.

For those interested in participating, please read the following information about what to expect and how to prepare, from Frontier Skateparks designer/builder Mike Greenwald:

"The reason I began to design skateparks is that I felt like I was seeing a lack of creativity and progression in the parks that were being built.  They all began to look the same and the features within them continued to be reproduced over and over again.  As skateboarders, we are taking simple, fundamental tricks and developing and combining them and performing them on different and new terrain.  Often times, the terrain causes us to develop new tricks or opportunities to do older tricks in new ways.  This is progression that contributes back to the overall body of work that is skateboarding… doing something new that other people can take and build upon.  I feel a responsibility to constantly look for and be open to new possibilities in skatepark design.

Concrete is a magical medium: it starts as rock and powder, becomes a liquid, and finally turns into an extremely hard solid.  There is no limit to the possible shapes that liquid can take… and so it is with concrete.  With imagination and skillful placement and finishing, there is no end to the shapes it can take. “ - Mike Greenwald, Frontier Skateparks

I’d like to encourage your group members to do the following:

1. Challenge yourself to think creatively, beyond features or obstacles that you have either ridden or seen.  There are an infinite number of obstacles that haven’t been built or thought of yet… contemplate these and if an image comes into your mind, try and draw it. 

2. If there is a specific feature that you are interested in incorporating into the design, draw it and if possible give it a location within the park. 

3. Contemplate an obstacle that would push your limits… Maybe it scares you but you’d like to conquer that fear. Try and draw it.

4. If you are having trouble drawing a feature / obstacle, see if you can find and print an image of it.

5. Contemplate this as a goal: we want to build a park that will give a maximum amount of skaters a maximum amount of joy… all at the same time.  This is a real spacial challenge!

6. Bring an open and positive mindset to the meeting.