Mike Fox Park
The Ken Wormhoudt skate park is a 15,000 square foot park inside the Mike Fox Park. Features include full pipe, two bowls with pool coping and tile, practice bowl and street course with steps, hubba ledges, wall-rides and metal. The park is located at 225 San Lorenzo Blvd at Riverside Avenue. Limited on-site parking. Nearest public parking is at Laurel and Front Streets.
SKATE PARK RULES: Open 9 a.m. to sunset daily. All skaters must wear a helmet, elbow pads, and knee pads and have skateboards and in-line skates with composite wheels only. Bicycles, scooters, and metal skate wheels are not allowed in the skate park. The skate park will be closed during rainy or wet conditions.
CITY NAMES NEW SKATE PARK AFTER KEN WORMHOUDT: The Santa Cruz City Council at its May 8, 2007 meeting unanimously voted to name the new skate park at Mike Fox Park in honor of Ken Wormhoudt.
City policy allows Council to name park facilities in honor of an individual who has a long-standing affiliation with the City and has made a significant contribution to the community in terms of improvement of quality of life.
Before his passing in 1997, Ken Wormhoudt was the world's premier skate park architect and continues to be well recognized as the pioneer of skate park planning. His approach, which his son, Zach Wormhoudt follows to this day, is to involve local skaters in designing their own park, with the architect providing a realistic sense of options and helping the skaters to select and arrange the features which meet their needs. Ken would provide the skaters with modeling clay and have them work together to design their own ideal park.
Ken Wormhoudt designed and oversaw the construction of what is generally considered to be the first skate park in the world at Derby Park in Santa Cruz. After completing Derby Park, Ken, initially on his own and later with his son Zach Wormhoudt, went on to design and construct over 80 municipal skate parks and provided skate park facility planning and design consulting for over 460 skate parks in municipalities around the world. Ken and the firm he created with Zach Wormhoudt have won numerous awards for excellence from the Skate Park Association, U.S.A., the California and Nevada Parks and Recreation Societies, the American Public Works Association, and other professional and civic organizations.
In addition to creating local skateboarding facilities, Ken Wormhoudt contributed in countless ways to parks and public art in the City of Santa Cruz. Ken was on the Arts Commission for years and played the major role on the Public Art Committee during a time when an incredible amount of public art was created downtown and on West Cliff Drive, including the surfer sculpture.
Ken was determined to make public art a reality, and when the budget to build bases and settings for various sculptures and art pieces was lacking, Ken would complete the work himself as an unpaid volunteer. The well-loved Tom Scribner statue now on Pacific Avenue lived in Ken�s garage for one to two years after the earthquake until the sculptor came back to town and worked on its restoration.
Beyond public art, one can see Ken's design work in several City parks and streetscapes, including Laurel Park, the Beach Flats Community Park, the serpentine on the hill on Second Street and many others.
Ken Wormhoudt was a skate park pioneer who earned a place in skate park history and made invaluable contributions to the local community. The naming of the new skate park in his honor is a tribute to his life, his family and many friends, and the community.
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