Park gets concrete games donation

ROSEBURG, Ore. – A tiny City park is transforming into a downtown recreational gem with the donation of cornhole boards and a pingpong table.

Stone Age Concrete Games of Roseburg built and installed a 2,400-pound concrete pingpong table and two concrete cornhole boards weighing 400 pounds each in Eagles Park on Wednesday, May 28. Nonprofit Thrive Umpqua and its Built Environment Committee helped connect the family-owned company with City officials and Parks and Recreation staff.

Sitting at the far end of Southeast Jackson Street, the park already offered two concrete picnic tables with inlaid chess/checker boards in a quarter acre of green open space in the heart of downtown. But the park has often been overlooked by those coming downtown to shop, dine or work.

However, that’s starting to change with a recent influx of students living across from the park in Umpqua Community College’s new dorm, Hawk’s Hideaway.

“We’ve been working to do something at Eagles Park for quite a while, and when the college started moving kids in here, it’s, ‘How do we involve the kids and make the park what it was intended to be – a community gathering space?’ ” said retired Roseburg City Manager Lance Colley, who now chairs Thrive Umpqua’s Steering Committee.

Stone Age Concrete Games is owned by the James family, who were impressed by the pingpong tables they saw in almost every park on a family trip to Germany, said Stone Age’s Operations Manager Josh James.

“We just thought it was really cool and we were a little jealous,” said James, whose mom was born in Germany.

His dad, Lem James, began the business 15 years ago after he and son Josh went to a party where people were playing table tennis and having a lot of fun. Lem James, who has a background in construction, had been toying with starting his own business. Although only a high school junior at the time, Josh James told his father they had found the right enterprise.

That week, Josh James drew up a design for a concrete pingpong table during a drafting class. Lem James poured the first table within two weeks.

Stone Age Concrete Games was the first business to focus on concrete table and lawn games in North America and remains the principal company with that focus, Josh James said. They make cornhole boards and tables for pingpong, foosball, chess, backgammon, dominoes and shuffleboard, plus round pingpong tables and new games such as Ladder Ball, Connect 4 and Box Hockey.

Their game tables and cornhole boards have been sold everywhere from the Parrott House and Backside Brewing in Roseburg to United Nations Plaza in San Francisco, the University of North Alabama, a rooftop park in Anchorage, and San Jacinto Plaza in downtown El Paso. Most of their products are shipped to California, Texas and Florida.

Stone Age Concrete donated the pingpong table and cornhole boards to Eagles Park in memory of a late Roseburg resident, Bobby Troup. He was a former tennis pro who came to love pingpong and who opened the “Pit” – a large warehouse style room with a pingpong table in the back of the old Mid-Oregon Printing building on Southeast Stephens Street – to a devoted “underground” pingpong club that played together four nights a week, sometimes until 1 a.m.

Troup had played tennis professionally in France for a summer and later worked as a tennis pro in Seattle and Roseburg, where he was born and raised. He also worked as a fashion/commercial photographer, rock band manager and party promoter. Josh James met Troup only last year, but they played a lot of table tennis together before Troup died of a heart attack in September.

The pingpong table carries a plaque commemorating Troup. Eagles Park was the perfect location for a memorial because it’s only a block from where the “Pit” was, said James, who has organized regular play at the park on Thursday nights.

Local residents are invited to join those pingpong matches at Eagles Park, 728 S.E. Jackson St., at 6 p.m. on Thursdays. Stone Age Concrete set up a Facebook page where locals can make plans to play pingpong or cornhole or post photos, stories or problems. People are expected to bring their own equipment.

“We’re so grateful to have the new additions donated to the park, and hope to see more of the community using Eagles Park for recreational activities,” said Roseburg Parks and Recreation Coordinator Tracy David. “It is a great park that is right downtown, close to offices and businesses where people can come downtown for both recreation and work or shopping or other services.”

The pingpong table and cornhole boards are available first-come, first-served, like other park amenities. One way to share the table and boards is to form a line during an on-going match and have the winning person or team play the next player or players in line. Playing doubles, rather than singles, allows more players to use the table faster. Once a team or player has beaten all the other teams, players usually try new team combinations, James said.

“Most facilities are first-come, first-served. We’d hope that people would be courteous and realize if people are waiting to play, they should take turns,” David added.