Second Oldest Woodward Location Debuts the Largest Number of New Facilities Since its Original Opening.
This week Woodward, the global leader in action sports experiences, celebrated the 20th anniversary of Woodward West – the second oldest Woodward location second only to Woodward Pennsylvania and located just two hours from Los Angeles – by debuting the largest number of new facilities at the property since its original opening in 2003 including a full renovation of its iconic Poco Loco skatepark and a brand new Progression Centre. Woodward leadership and staff as well as VIP athletes, partners, friends and local dignitaries joined 211 campers attending Week 6 of camp on July 10 for a ribbon cutting, visiting pro demo in the new parks, inflatable water slide and then culminating into a birthday party.
“Many campers, staff and visiting pros have had enormous fun at this property over the last two decades, but we could not be more thrilled to celebrate our 20th anniversary but unveiling a new iteration of Woodward West facilities,” said Phoebe Mills, VP of Camp Experiences & Programming at Woodward Global.
Designed by Tito Porrata of the Platform Group, in collaboration with the Woodward team, and built by Bostrom Designs, the Progression Centre is a brand new skatepark and parkour gym catered to participants that are completely new to the sport or beginners within the sport. Woodward historically only had parks that catered to participants who were of intermediate to advanced ability level. This new park fills that void by offering a less intimidating and more welcoming environment for people to learn how to participate in the sport. The new park has 24,000 square feet of rideable area with a variety of features built on both skatelite and concrete surfaces. It offers features that are typically found in contest-level skate parks but scaled down to beginner ability sizes. Unique to the Woodward West Progression Centre are grindable ledges and rail into foam pits, and a long mini ramp with three different transition heights.
“The Progression Centre is designed for campers on the lower end of our progression scale and focused on learning the basics of action sports,” said Steve Swope, VP Development & Innovative Environments at Woodward Global. “Features are generally small, low to the ground and less intimidating, including areas that allow for intuitive progression to incrementally higher features and thus more advanced skills. This environment is ideal for anyone in the Multisport program as they will be able to use all areas of the building to start with the basics on balance, coordination, stance and technique and work their way up in confidence and skill level.”
The new Poco Loco skatepark is a full renovation of the old skatelite-surfaced Poco Loco into a modern concrete style skatepark. Although it’s in the same location within Woodward West, the new Poco Loco offers a brand-new design that expands on the previous footprint by 6,600 square feet to a total of 16,200 square feet of rideable surfaces. The new iteration is more of an urban style transition park with lots of angled transition and banks and is geared towards beginner to intermediate skateboarders and scooter riders. Poco Loco was designed by California Skateparks, the largest international builder of skateparks whose resume includes content venue builds for X Games, Dew Tour, World Skate, and the Olympics.
During the grand opening, a VIP athlete demo of Poco Loco took place featuring skateboarders Ryan Sheckler, Manny Santiago and Heimana Reynolds; BMX riders Dennis Enarson and Daniel Sandoval; pro scooter athlete Dylan Morrison and professional roller skater Ivey Rose. The “ribbon cutting” ceremony consisted of more than 200 campers breaking through a roll of butcher paper to officially open the new facilities.
“Woodward distinguishes itself as the global leader in action sports experiences because of our innovative environments – we take pride in keeping our facilities world-class and re-building existing parks and obstacles when the time is right,” said Mills. “Having our VIP athlete partners and 200 campers out here to make it official is really the greatest way to debut our new Progression Centre and Poco Loco.”