For a brief moment in 2004, the most important piece of Fresno architecture seemed to be an abandoned swimming pool behind a derelict hotel on a most empty stretch of Broadway Avenue in downtown.
Twenty years later, the legacy of the so-called Vagabond Pool can still be found in the pages of skate magazines, in shaky VHS footage ( check YouTube ) and in the memories of those who were there.
But the promise of one day reviving the iconic skate spot seems to have been lost to time along with changes in city staffing and the financial crisis.
“Vagabond was on track to be a great project,” says Zachary Wormhoudt, principal landscape architect with the Santa Cruz skate park design firm Wormhoudt Inc., which had been working with Fresno’s parks department on a plan to recreate the iconic pool.
“The city defunded that skate park and others during the economic downturn of 2009.”
Design plans for the Vagabond Pool Skate Complex in Fresno, California. Wormhoudt, Inc.
What happened to the Vagabond Pool?
The Vagabond Motor Hotel had been abandoned for nearly a decade when it was set to be demolished in 2004.
In its place, a new 38-unit apartment complex would be built. It would be the first residential housing built in downtown in a quarter century and the catalyst for what is now the mural district.
The motel’s overgrown bushes and boarded-up rooms were set behind a chain link fence in an industrial area of downtown that was, at the time, just warehouses and railroad tracks; not exactly a destination worthy of the mention from the Convention and Visitors Bureau.
But the pool had become a cultural destination spot among skateboarders.
Steve-O, the comedian and long-time skater, told The Bee in 2004 that he visited the Vagabond often in his pre-”Jackass” days. He was living in San Luis Obispo and had a girlfriend in Fresno.
Transworld Skateboarding ranked the Vagabond No. 2 on its list of legendary swimming pool skate spots. The magazine said it was the “only reason to stop in Fresno while driving through the fertile San Joaquin Valley.”
They showed up at historical preservation committee meetings and spoke in front of the city council. They held regular protests in front of the hotel and lobbied to save at least a piece of the pool (its iconic ledge-cap coping) for future use.
If the pool couldn’t be saved, it could at least be rebuilt. Or that was the plan, anyway.
Skateboarders use the pool and surrounding area at the abandoned Vagabond Motel in downtown Fresno in April 2004. KURT HEGRE/Fresno Bee file
An unfinished skate complex
In 2007, the city moved forward with plans to build a replica of the pool as part of a skate complex and mixed-use development at Hamilton Avenue and Sarah Street south of downtown. The pool, which had its contours and elevations digitally mapped by a survey team prior to its being demolished, would have been centerpiece for the complex and open to the public for a price of $2.50 or $1.50 for children, as reported by The Bee. Out-of-towners would pay more.
The project would cost $750,000 in the parks department’s funding and was expected to be completed in 2009.
That wasn’t a great year for finances in Fresno.
The Fresno Metropolitan Museum found itself overextended and was forced into bankruptcy. The city itself was looking at a $28 million general fund deficit and a budget crisis that led to a week-long furlough of city employees and major cuts across city departments. Four parks department neighborhood centers were closed.
Skate parks weren’t a priority in the way they had been in the mid-2000s.
“Fresno parks and recreation staff was on a mission to make ‘Fresyes’ the city with the most and best skateparks in (California),” Wormhoudt says. “I would guess that now the efforts for Vagabond have long since been forgotten and are not on the agenda for any city staff.”
A message to the city inquiring about the Vagabond complex was not immediately returned.
Though the plans do still exist.
The company has everything saved in a folder and placed on indefinite standby, “should things change in the future.”
And, yes, the pool could be recreated in any city, given its iconic nature. But it won’t be, Wormhoudt says.
“We are keeping it for Fresno.”
Skateboarder Aaron Gomes rides the Vagabond Pool in Fresno, California, in 2004. FRESNO BEE FILE
Get updates delivered to you daily. Free and customizable.
It’s essential to note our commitment to transparency:
Our Terms of Use acknowledge that our services may not always be error-free, and our Community Standards emphasize our discretion in enforcing policies. As a platform hosting over 100,000 pieces of content published daily, we cannot pre-vet content, but we strive to foster a dynamic environment for free expression and robust discourse through safety guardrails of human and AI moderation.
Local News
Comments / 0