WHEN Jim Barnum was forced to choose between washing dishes and designing skate parks 11 years ago, he paused for a moment. Then he laughed.
"That was a pretty easy decision," says 38-year-old North Vancouver native who was working at a restaurant in Whistler when he got distracted creating parks on the side.
"I was travelling too much, I was missing all my shifts," he explains. "My boss at my dishwashing job had me in for a talk and said . . . 'Is it going to be washing dishes or doing skate parks?'"
Fast-forward to 2011, and Barnum, now the president of Spectrum Skatepark Creations, has completed 110 parks throughout Canada, as well as five in France and one in England.
Earlier this week, he travelled to Germany to accept an architecture award from the International Olympic Committee and the International Association for Sports and Leisure Facilities in recognition of Spectrum's Bonsor Park in Burnaby.
The 22,000-square-foot space, which opened in 2005, is one of the first of its kind to break skateboarding into different disciplines, according to Barnum.
"A lot of skate parks prior to that, they would try to mix street skating and bowl skating and everything all into one park and . . . what you end up with is sort of watered down," he says.
Bonsor boasts a street-style plaza designed to look like downtown Vancouver with ramps, stairs, platforms and curbs; a standalone bowl; a full pipe with a viewing deck on top; and a beginner zone. But the park isn't just for skaters to enjoy, says Barnum.
"We took into consideration a lot of different viewing areas, a lot of ways to incorporate the general public so that they can come into the park and feel safe there."
After growing up skating the streets of North Vancouver, Barnum began pursuing a "half-assed professional snowboarding career" in Whistler when he decided to replace the resort municipality's existing skate park.
"They used an old technology where the concrete was all broken up and you literally couldn't ride the park anymore, it was full of holes," he explains.
Armed with the help of his dad, an architect, Barnum got his plans approved by town council. His park made use of a durable form of concrete, designed to withstand West Coast weather and skateboarding alike.
Following its completion, calls from other municipalities started pouring in.
According to Barnum, all of Spectrum's parks strive to be as eco-friendly as possible, using a waste product called flyash to replace cement powder - a leading greenhouse gas producer. Water is also drained back into the landscape instead of the sewer system and planting is punched into certain areas of the parks.
For more information go to www.spectrum-sk8. com.
