City: Long Beach, California

Size: 9,500 sq. ft.

Role: Skatepark Designer and Builder

Year Built: 2012

Since skateboarding first made its way to Long Beach in the 1970s, local youth have consistently earned a reputation for approaching skateboarding with an unmistakable level of passion and commitment.  Taking a stand against the social and economic issues that challenged their daily lives, the skaters of Long Beach have wholeheartedly embraced skateboarding – both as a vehicle for bringing people together and as a way to maintain a positive, healthy lifestyle.

With a background story this inspiring, Spohn Ranch was proud to honor the spirit of Long Beach skateboarding with the design and construction of the City’s most vibrant and well-rounded facility to date.  The project was also chosen as the Tony Hawk Foundation’s spotlight project of the year, with a “Stand Up For Skateparks” event held in October to raise additional funds for the park.

As Spohn Ranch approached the design phase of the project, our goal was to create Long Beach’s first true skate plaza.  More than just another place to ride, they wanted to create an engaging public space that would resemble an urban streetscape and give local skaters a sense of place and community.  Putting themselves in the mind of an average Long Beach skater, they asked themselves, “What would it take to create a park that would keep me excited to come back here every single day?”.  Reflecting today’s modern style of skateboarding, this 9,000 square foot design focuses less on traditional ramps, bowls and half-pipes and allocates more space towards features one would find in a common urban setting – benches, stairs, handrails, etc.

By far the most compelling and significant aspect of this design is the inclusion of the letters “LBC” in the banked wall.  By increasing the width of this feature, Spohn Ranch will be able to set these larger-than-life letters into the piece and allow them to rise up out of the park.  With a sculptural quality not found in any other skatepark, these letters singlehandedly elevate this skatepark to iconic proportions. When this skatepark appears in professional magazines, videos and local user YouTube videos, these letters will become an instantly recognizable symbol of Long Beach’s dedication to quality skateboarding facilities.  Empowering the local skaters with the knowledge and pride that their community is special, these letters will further unite Long Beach’s skaters and cement the City’s place in skateboarding history.

At the official grand opening, our work was praised by Tony Hawk himself: “It’s an excellent street-plaza design, with just enough transitions to make it well-rounded,” says Hawk. “It has something for all skill levels, and is exactly the type of project, area, and advocacy that we want to get involved with. It should be an example for other communities to follow.”

Photos by Anthony Acosta

City: Salt Lake City, Utah

Size: 9,600 sq. ft.

Role: Skatepark Designer AND Builder

Year Built: 2011

Spohn Ranch, a cornerstone of action sports progression, came through big for the Dew Tour’s third stop in Salt Lake City, Utah this past weekend with the design and construction of the “Skateboard Street” course. Hot off the success of the Ocean City, Maryland and Portland, Oregon stops, the Toyota Challenge in SLC featured BMX dirt/vert, freestyle moto, and skate vert/street competitions. The famed “Portable Concrete Bowl” is currently in storage until the next season, with rumors hinting that it will be featured at every stop.

For SLC, our 11,000 square foot concrete skatepark replicated an urban plaza environment with recreations of popular features today’s top street skaters are riding. With a huge overlap into our overall design process, having our skateparks and event courses scrutinized by the world’s top professional skaters on a daily basis, provides us with invaluable feedback that is incorporated into our municipal projects for an unmatched level of quality.  Finals highlights can be seen here!

Via Alli Sports:

“In what the riders were calling out as one of the best courses the Dew Tour has ever built, the guys were throwing trick after trick as proof. Once the final jam was underway, it was Decenzo who got his rhythm going with a nollie heel down the gap, and solid tech tricks while making full use of the course. His intro run, earlier jam and final jam score of 87.18 gave him the win and it also earned him the overall lead for the Dew Cup. When the competition ended, he credited the course with helping him take the win.

“The way they put the whole big section together was good, the hubbas were the right height and the rails were the right height, steepness and length,” Decenzo said. “It was great for progressing and landing tricks consistently.”

City: Holland Michigan

Size: 10,000 sq. ft.

Role: Skatepark Designer AND Builder

Year Built: 2011

In 2011, Spohn Ranch was chosen as the skatepark designer and builder for the 10,000 square foot concrete space at Smallenburg Park. The project was our second for the City of Holland, as we successfully completed another 10,000 square foot park at Dirkse Park in 2009.  Officially open for a few weeks now, the park is already generating a lot of hype in the State of Michigan, with skateboarders traveling from across the state to ride one of the area’s most modern skateparks. Lined by large trees, the park has an incredibly inviting aesthetic and feels like a vibrant community gathering space.

Our design process involved collaboration with a local landscape architect, as well as design workshops with the local skaters who we’ve come to know very well through our work on Holland’s David Dirkse Skatepark.

City: Los Angeles, California

Size: 8,800 sq. ft.

Role: Skatepark Designer and Builder

Year Built: 2011

With Spohn Ranch’s latest Los Angeles design/build project at the Hansen Dam Recreation Area, we are coming full circle with a well-rounded space that balances plaza and transition in a flowing fashion. Riding the plaza wave, this 8,800 square foot concrete skatepark features integral colored concrete, granite-capped ledges and brick stamped banks. With a 2,500 square foot flow bowl, the park also speaks to a somewhat neglected LA action sports subculture – transition skaters.

Working with our 10+ year client, Los Angeles Recreation and Parks, the new facility at Hansen Dam Park is a state-of-the-art space unlike any other in the area. The well rounded space blends the multiple genres of skate terrain in a cutting-edge fashion by anchoring the park’s entrance with a unique bowl and snaking street-inspired features around a landscaped area in the center of the park.

Construction in the City of LA is challenging to say the least. It is one of the strictest and most expensive building environments in the nation, where only financially stable and well-staffed firms can survive. This project in particular presented several unique hurdles that while challenging at the time, helped us emerge as a wiser and more well-rounded firm – prepared to tackle the toughest of site constraints and most complex of logistical riddles.

City: The Mississippi River – St. Paul to NOLA

Size: 6,000 sq. ft.

Role: Skatepark Designer and Builder

Year Built: 2011

Another innovative Spohn Ranch/Red Bull collaboration, the Red Bull Mississippi Grind was an event series centered around a concrete skatepark we designed and built on a barge that would travel down the Mississippi River.  The barge made port stops in St. Paul, MN, Quad Cities, IA and St. Louis, MO before reaching its final stop in the Big Easy.

Each stop was action-packed with demos from world-class Red Bull athletes and local legends, as well as local “Ticket to Grind” qualifying competitions. And to top off this amazing story, the concrete elements will be donated by Spohn Ranch to the City of New Orleans and incorporated into a new public skatepark.

City: Rialto, California

Size: 16,000 sq. ft.

Role: Skatepark Designer and Builder

Year Built: 2011

The result of rigorous analysis and collaborative community engagement, Rialto’s Fergusson Park will soon be home to one of the Inland Empire’s premiere skateboarding landscapes.

Working alongside RHA Landscape Architects, we were presented with an under-utilized 16,000 square foot roller hockey rink as our canvas. Inspired by the passion of a local family who had spent years advocating for a skatepark, we embarked on a design process aimed at creating a state-of-the-art facility that would serve both transition and street skaters in a harmonious way.

Spohn Ranch President and Founder, Aaron Spohn, tapped into 20+ years of industry experience and led multiple design workshops with the local skateboard community. These workshops garnered valuable feedback; from the general – the ratio of plaza to transition terrain, to the specific – dimensions of handrails and style of pool coping. With the local inspiration in hand, we returned to the drawing board and developed a unique concept that would make efficient use of the existing slab, while maintaining a sculptural and aesthetic quality. The final design features aspects of both modern urban architecture and traditional backyard pool skating.

City: Miami, Florida

Size: 14,000 sq. ft.

Role: Skatepark Designer and Builder

Year Built: 2011

In 2011, Spohn Ranch was selected as the skatepark designer and builder for the new skatepark in Miami Dade County.  Our third concrete skatepark in Miami, the park follows our two previous projects – the highly popular Westwinds Skatepark and smaller Homestead Skatepark.  Located at Kendall Indian Hammocks Park, the skatepark complements a rich assortment of baseball diamonds, soccer fields and walking trails.

Overcoming a few unique site constraints, our design was very thorough in ensuring optimal feature density and flow patterns.  At 14,000 square feet, the park balances transition and plaza-based features for inspired sessions that cease to become routine.  With integral colored concrete and an array of sculptural cantilevered features, the park is the County’s most vibrant and intriguing space to date.

City: Oregon, Illinois

Size: 6,500 sq. ft.

Role: Skatepark Designer and Builder

Year Built: 2011

At roughly 6,000 square feet of skateable concrete, this innovative plaza design balances unique lines, colored concrete and a sculptural aesthetic to create a one-of-a-kind skateboarding space.  An architectural layout breaks the norm of uninspiring back-and-forth skateparks, while the detailed interior/exterior landscaping design brings a vibrant aesthetic to the park.

During the grand opening ceremony, Jim Coutts, Oregon Park District Recreation Director, noted “From the park district’s point of view, whenever we have a project or open a venue, or do anything, the measure of success is whether it’s used or not. From the looks today and the weeks previous, I think we hit a home run!”

City: Portland, Oregon

Size: 4,000 & 9,600 sq. ft.

ROLE: Skatepark Designer and Builder

Year Built: 2011

As the Dew Tour rolled into Portland, Oregon with the first “Skate Street” event of the season, the goal was to create a modern, street-inspired course that would continue to complement the Dew Tour’s unique contest format.

In line with the street plaza movement, concrete is an integral part of this course and allowed the design to transform into a work of urban architecture.  The course features the defining elements of a downtown plaza, while maintaining the perfect kind of flow that makes the Dew Tour events so fun to watch.  With an innovative circular flow, free from any dead ends, riders are able to easily cruise up and down through the course and really let their style shine as they go from one feature to the next.

Anchoring the center of the course is an extra-wide staircase supported by concrete hubba ledges and a handrail, both inspired by real-world scale found in the streets.  Landscaped planters and grass gaps add to the architectural aesthetic of the course, while provide great opportunities for big, crowd-pleasing tricks.  An array of hips, ledges, manual pads and smaller hubbas and handrails round out the course, creating a near infinite number of lines and combinations.

In addition to designing/building a street course for the world’s top professional skaters, our engineering marvel – the portable concrete bowl, was shipped from Ocean City, Maryland and rolled into Portland for its second and final event of the season.

City: Woodland Park, Colorado

Size: 24,000 sq. ft.

Role: Skatepark Designer and Builder

Year Built: 2011

The fenced-in lot with cheese-grater asphalt and dilapidated wood/metal ramps that Woodland Park’s skateboarders and BMX bike riders used to call home, is no more.  Thankfully they have a new space to call home – a bigger, more challenging and more aesthetically-pleasing place.

Since 2008, Spohn Ranch worked hand-in-hand with the City of Woodland Park, Colorado to develop a state-of-the-art facility which would replace the cramped and outdated metal ramp park built by a local contractor in the late ‘90s.  After assisting City officials with a Colorado grant application, we hosted community design workshops with local riders to find out how their ideal skatepark session would come together.

These meetings revealed that the community’s skaters preferred a vibrant, street style concrete park, while the BMX bike riders favored dirt terrain.  As pioneers of both skate and BMX course design, we pushed ahead with an all-inclusive action sports park, broken up into separate facilities for the different disciplines.

The skatepark features roughly 8,000 square feet of concrete terrain, defined by plaza style features and a colorful aesthetic.  Integral colored concrete and a diversity of sculptural features complement the progression of skateboarding – inconceivable at the time of City’s original metal ramp park.  The freestyle BMX course features 16,000 square feet of dirt skillfully shaped into table-top jumps, rhythm rollers, spines and hips.