Glendale needs a Bike Skills Park. Southern California needs a Bike Skills Park. Sign our petition and let the City of Glendale know!
Bike Park showing Wooden and Dirt features (Italy)
Bike Skills Parks are a dedicated area for bicycles and include features like a pump track, progressive tabletop jumps, balance training features, XC short tracks, and much more. They can include dirt features, man-made (cut) wooden features, natural wooden features, and rock features. They are becoming more and more popular as people realize the skill-building fun and health-promoting exercise they provide.
A great example is the Woodward West Bike Park in Fresno. The City of Fresno, local mountain bike advocacy groups and the community came together to make this park a reality. We would like to see that model emulated here in Glendale.
In 2007 and 2008, the CORBA trail crew assisted the City of Glendale in developing their Trails Master Plan. In that plan are several desired new trail corridors in the Verdugos, San Rafael Hills and the foothills of Mt. Lukens. The biggest and most significant addition to the Trails Master Plan is a Bike Skills Park.
In Glendale’s Citywide Trails Master Plan for the San Rafael Hills (available as a PDF here), a bike skills park location is identified as “A” on the San Rafael map. Subsequent to the City’s adoption of the Trails Master Plan, CORBA volunteers worked with the City to identify the most suitable location.
With City Parks staff, we identified what we believe is an ideal location for a Bike Skills Park project. There is access from existing park facilities, and it could easily be tied in to the trail network of Cherry Canyon and the San Rafael Hills. There are no nearby neighbors to disturb, and the location is surrounded by open space to the east and the 2 freeway on the western side. The land itself consists of debris fill from the construction of the 2 freeway.
Glendale will be revising its Bicycle Master Plan in 2011, and we want to see the Bike Skills Park included in that plan. As of this writing the public hearing dates for Glendale’s Bike Plan have not yet been set. When those hearings are held, we want to show how much demand and community support exists for a Bike Skills Park.
To demonstrate that need, we are gathering signatures on a petition. You can read and sign our petition online on iPetitions.com. If you prefer, you can print out a PDF version of our Petition and gather signatures from your friends, family and neighbors. If you choose the printed petition, please snail mail, email or fax the petition sheets back to us as they are filled.
Woodward West Bike Park’s Pump Track:
If you’d like to get more involved, we encourage you to write a letter to:
Trails and Open Space Specialist
City of Glendale
Parks, Recreation & Community Services
613 E. Broadway, Room 120
Glendale, Ca 91206-4399
Here’s PDF version of the petition for you to print and gather signatures from your friends: 2011 Glendale Bike Park Petition (PDF).
If you’d like to get more involved, email steve@corbamtb.com to express your interest.
Tags: Bike Park, Bike Skills Park, Glendale
I am really pushing for this park, as I have been doing before I knew about this plan. We need to make sure that these parks supply terrain for not only our beginners, but also our intermediates, experts, and pros. I know it’s early in the game, but these things are often overlooked.
I’m a Burbank resident and small business owner and I am an avid mountain bike rider. Since the first of this year all the local bike parks have been destroyed. A set of legal dirt jumps would make so many riders so very happy. If there’s dirt jumps I’ll be there 5 times a week.
we need a bike park….