The Washington Jefferson Park rehabilitation has been highly anticipated by local skaters and other community members. The park is scheduled to open in April with an official grand opening for National Skate Day on June 21 and will be the largest covered and lit public skate park in the United States at 23,000 sq. ft.
In effort to create a communal environment, the Washington Jefferson Park will also include an urban plaza catering to families, vendor pads for events, bike racks, benches, drinking fountains and a relocated bathroom that is much more visible.
“This park is going to prevent the crime that used to be here. All those tweakers and bums aren’t going to be here anymore,” said local skater Shaun Ownbey as he peered through the fence. “When this was all a playground, it was the scariest place.”
The park will also contain energy-efficient lighting that will light the park 24 hours a day.
Dreamland Skate parks designed and built the park. Mark Scott, CEO of Dreamland, also built the famous Burnside Skate Park in Portland. It was built illegally 22 years ago, and later sanctioned by the city and immortalized in Tony Hawk’s skating video game.
“There are only a limited amount of cities that have skate parks of a substantial sort,” Darryl Larson, a Eugene parks foundation board member, said. “Those cities tend to get these big competitions that come in, and I think Eugene is going to end up getting some of those world-renowned competitions here.”
Large-scale events and competitions will have continuous economic benefits for Lane County and the Eugene community, along with many other positive benefits. Some community members have lauded the 24-hour access to the park’s bathroom, the first of its kind in Eugene. The bathroom was designed after the Portland Loo project, and speaks directly to some of the needs of the Whoville movement, which began campaigning for 24-hour bathroom options after members of SLEEPS won a court case upholding that their removal from the Wayne Morse Free Speech was unconstitutional.
Skaters and community members alike are looking to the park as a productive renovation to the community.