Jay Hoots, the owner of Hoots Inc. and a bike skills park and trail designer, was in 100 Mile House at the curling rink to present to the public his plans for a bike park in the community on March 16.
“A couple years ago council directed staff to hire Jay to prepare an assessment of the bike park in Centennial Park so he did and he came up with some preliminary assessments of the park, some challenges and some of the cool features there,” said Joanne Doddridge, the director of economic development, during her introduction.
After he came back with his assessment, council were interested in finding out more according to Doddridge and hired Hoots to help create a master plan to integrate the bike park in Centennial Park.
It was not the first time a bike park was built in 100 Mile House. One was built in 2009 by Peter Skene Ogden Secondary School because of some shady jumps built by local riders. It was built due to safety concerns but due to a lack of maintenance and usage, it ultimately failed.
Another one was built in the hills of Centennial Park in 2015 by a group of youths and is well maintained and sees a high level of usage. They youth using the parks have hosted competitions and have attracted riders from out of town.
However, it was built without permits and without any type of standards.
“What I’ve been told is to somehow look at this situation,” said Hoots.
“The situation is that we have a bike park that doesn’t exist anymore and we have an unauthorized area that’s been developed in the trees.”
Hoots added that the group of youth who built the park without any permit obviously put in a lot of work but if it were to be opened up to the general public it may not be sustainable due to the level of jumps not allowing for beginners.
Hoots looked at building a group around the 99 Mile trails due to the topography, which is ideal for mountain biking but some pretty significant roadblocks came up he said.
He decided the location and the inaccessibility for kids with bikes made it an unlikely choice while on the other hand, Centennial Park was in the middle of the town and much easier for children to get to on bikes safely.
Additionally, the type of rocks at the 99 Mile, easy to shatter, sharp and angular in shape, could be a danger to fall on and would cost a lot to regularly maintain, starting with taking them all out.
This led him to a Centennial Park concept, due to the location where it is accessible to almost everyone. If any biking events were hosted at the park, it’s also relatively close to hotels where out of towners can drop off their kids at the park and go check in or just walk over in a short amount of time.
“In order for this to work out, it has to be the sum of all parts from a consultation perspective, from a planning perspective and from a community and resource perspective. Then the community needs to guide and give direction to the council on how to move forward,” said Hoots.
Clubs are essential in building parks, Hoots said. Saying local biking clubs need to get involved with bringing an authorized bike park and trails to 100 Mile House.
“This isn’t a two-bit flyby kind of ‘lets make something work’ but actually the concept of this thing should it move forward, it is a professional endeavour that actually has a ton of value to it from a whole bunch of different perspectives,” said Hoots after receiving community feedback.
“Also, I think they saw the fit. Cenntenial Park made sense for it.”
If the Centennial Park concept should go through, the unauthorized park already built might face different options regarding its future such as bringing it up to standard and building and making it more accessible for the general public.
The open house had roughly 70 people in the audience.
