It’s rare for a career path to take you back to your roots in a way as poetic as it did for Dug Ketterman, a Valparaiso native who now owns a design and rendering business in Beaverton, Oregon. Twenty-four years after designing the original “Flounder” skatepark in 1998, Ketterman was able to redesign the original park to create a new and improved “Flounder II,” which is currently in the fundraising stage of production.
“I've always viewed skateparks as living sculptures,” Ketterman said. “What I create is not really anything until somebody actually skates it in their own way. As soon as that happens, it comes to life. As a designer, you're like, ‘Okay, they're going to start here. Here's the line, I'm going to do this,’ and then all of a sudden, everybody's doing it upside down and backwards. I never would have thought of that, and that's the living side of it.”
Ketterman has been designing skate parks since he was a kid. After designing parks for friends and spending some time in college studying architecture, he was approached by the creators of courses for the “X Games.”
“I met up with a skatepark builder, and around 2009 I became their lead designer. From there, I designed 23 of the “X Games” courses and had projects all over the world. It was pretty awesome,” said Ketterman. “With that group, I was able to meet tons of people and work with lots of professionals.”
Ketterman puts the pinnacle of his career into two categories. From a professional standpoint, his work with the “X Games” and international clients have been the highlight of his career. From a personal standpoint, however, the “Flounder” projects in Valpo have been the most prominent points of his career.
“Emotionally and personally, being able to go full circle and come back to Flounder has been fantastic on its own level. That's been a greatly personal project for me,” Ketterman said.
The Flounder parks were named in memoriam to Ray “Flounder” Wampler, a friend Ketterman lost in a tragic accident in 1997. The first version of Flounder was created in Rogers-Lakewood Park in Valparaiso a year after Wampler’s death.
“It was just out in the middle of the forest and next to a pond, which nobody could see. There were no amenities either. It lasted 20 years, but it was plywood and not made for the Northwest elements,” Ketterman said.
Ketterman is thrilled to have the chance to create another park in remembrance of Wampler. The park is designed with the intent to be accessible to everyone, no matter their experience or abilities. There will be designated spaces made for beginners, intermediate, and advanced skaters, as well as a covered solar-powered miniramp. The park will also feature a wheelchair-accessible path made for individuals participating in Wheelchair MotorX (WCMX) activities, or for beginners who want a smoother path to practice on.
“You get all different types of people; not everybody's training for the Olympics. There's a huge generation of people like myself and in our 40s who skated as kids, but we want to go out and roll around, have a good time, and have something where it's not committing to just dropping into the deep end,” said Ketterman. “We were able to sort of organically incorporate everything while thinking of everybody that's going to be there, especially the ADA side of it.”
Another exciting feature of the park will be a musical manual pad. Saw cuts in the concrete will unlock the song “Bro Hymn” as a tribute to Wampler. This technique has never been used in a skatepark setting.
“At Ray Wampler’s funeral, they played a song called ‘Bro Hymn’ by Pennywise. It basically gives tribute to all of our friends and brothers who have died. That stuck with me over the years. I started thinking about it and wanted to create a memorial that you could interact with. In order to unlock this song, you would have to balance on two wheels – your back two or front two – to unlock the song,” Ketterman said.
The new skate park will be constructed at Fairgrounds Park and is currently in the fundraising stage of production. Ketterman’s biggest hope is to raise enough money to create the covered area of the skatepark.
“In the renderings, you’ll see a roof structure in the park. That roof structure is actually a solar-powered system where, in the daytime, you can have protection from the rain and skate the mini ramp that's underneath it. Light will be generated as the sun goes down. Then as the weather heats up, we'll have a fan inside that kicks on when it gets over 80 degrees,” Ketterman said.
The awning will be environmentally-friendly and an overall great space for people to enjoy skating, no matter the season. Ketterman describes it as a living unit, and he feels it’s especially important to create a structure like that in the Northwest Indiana climate.
“The awning is unfortunately an expensive feature, but it’s something I think would really be awesome if it gets realized,” Ketterman said. “Being able to have somewhere to skate when it's raining is huge. I don't know how many times I would go out and skate in the snow and we’d ollie over all the big snow in the winter.”
Valparaiso Parks Department is currently on stage two of the project, which includes raising enough money to begin production. To donate, you can visit the website here.
To learn more about the layout and thought process behind the park’s design, visit the link here.