Region's first bike park in works in Blue Ash

There's one being developed in Chicago, one in Louisville and another in Cleveland.

Now it seems Greater Cincinnati – Blue Ash, to be exact – may be next in line to build a bike park.

We're not talking a mountain bike trail through the woods, but an area – a training course of sorts – for mountain bikers of all ages and skill levels.

A conceptual plan for a bike park was unveiled to the public for the first time on Sunday at the annual meeting of the Cincinnati Off-Road Alliance, a grassroots group of cycling enthusiasts who promote and maintain more than 60 miles of mountain bike trails around Southwest Ohio and Northern Kentucky.

Plans are in the beginning stages, said Blue Ash Parks and Recreation employee Brian Kruse, who is also the operating manager of Summit Park where the bike park is planned on the now partially redeveloped Cincinnati-Blue Ash Airport property.

Kruse believes a bike park would continue to distinguish Summit Park as a destination for individuals and families around the region, unique to any other in the area.

"This is a pie-in-the-sky plan," Kruse said. "But if the community wants it and we can raise the money, we can do it."

Summit Park opened in August. The $75 million park encompasses 130 acres and today includes an open-ended Children's Playground, great lawn, quarter-mile trail, restrooms and some community meeting spaces.

A giant performance stage, which will host the Buckle Up country music festival in 2016, Taste of Blue Ash and other concerts and events, will be completed in May.

Phase Two should be completed by the fall and will include a 17,000 square-foot community building with an indoor and outdoor glass canopy and a plaza that will include a 4,000 square-foot space for the Brown Dog Café restaurant.

The city paid a little more than $15,000 for the conceptual plan for the bike park, Kruse said, and the feature was suggested by Blue Ash citizens during a rewrite of the city's parks and recreation master plan a few years ago.

"I'm pretty confident that we will have some sort of bike park element within two to three years," Kruse said.

The complete conceptual design as presented would likely cost around $1 million, Kruse said. But it could be built piece by piece or not encompass all the suggested features, which include a cyclocross training area, a skills station and pavilion where parents can sit and watch their kids on the course.

What is built depends on the support from the community and Blue Ash's elected officials, Kruse said.

The Parks and Recreation department will begin writing grant applications soon, Kruse said, but there is not currently any money set aside for the bike park, though some could become available in future phases of park development.

Chicago, Louisville, Cleveland and Terre Haute are the only other cities in the Midwest building bike parks, said Andy Williamson, Great Lakes Region director of the International Mountain Bicycling Association, but they have become wildly popular in other parts of the country.

Bicycling was the most popular outdoor activity among American youth in 2012 and the third-most popular for adults, according to an Outdoor Foundation's report on Outdoor Recreation Participation, Williamson (a 1998 Colerain High School graduate) pointed out.

"The really big change in the last 20-plus years is that municipalities are now contributing in these efforts," Williamson said. "We are no longer having to beg for access and do it on the backs of our volunteers. We have communities and counties and park districts ... like Blue Ash … that are starting to recognize the value."

Get involved by contacting the Cincinnati Off-Road Alliance at www.coramtb.org.