I've taken more than a few rides that included the Concrete Plant Park. I love that what could have been a remnant--a ruin, really--of the industrial past could be turned into a visually interesting recreational space.
The Concrete Plant Park could have become a dump, or worse. Such a fate has befallen too many other sites of closed factories and schools or abandoned residential and office buildings. Instead, it's a place where folks like me ride, run or walk, or take their kids just to get them out of their crowded apartments.
Now I've heard of something that's perhaps just as innovative: Using stuff that's been dumped to make a bike park. That's what some folks in Colorado have done. The result, aptly named Junk Yard Bike Park, is set to open on Monday, Memorial Day, thanks to Rocky Mountain Outdoor Center in Colorado Springs, near the entrance to Browns Canyon National Monument.
The idea for the park came to RMOC owner Brandon Slate not long after he and his business partner, Ryan Coulter, after they inherited the Arkansas River site in 2016. They started riding their mountain bikes among--and, in some cases, on--the junk when they realized the potential for creating "a bike park that will not only fill a local need but also draw people to RMOC to take advantage of the outpost's other features, such as its microbrewery, food truck and riverside setting."
The site, they say, will include bike lines for cyclists of various skill levels, a pump track and access to singletrack with mellow downhill sections and more technical drops.
Oh, and if you really want to have fun, you can drop from an old school bus or jump over a rusted classic car. You can't do that in Concrete Plant Park, or any other salvaged post-industrial site I know of.
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