Credit: JIM NOELKER
Credit: JIM NOELKER
“The Dayton Bike Yard was built extremely well,” said Zach Thorsky, a member of the Miami Valley Mountain Bike Association, which was one of the external partners on the project. “Honestly, the first time I saw it, I was blown away with the scale and how many different options there were.”
The Dayton Bike Yard was a $1.8 million project that completely remade Welcome Park, which is located at 1437 Edwin C. Moses Boulevard, behind Welcome Stadium in the Carillon neighborhood.
Credit: JIM NOELKER
Credit: JIM NOELKER
The city turned about seven acres of the roughly 10-acre park into bike facilities and recreational offerings, such as a perimeter trail.
The Bike Yard has pump tracks, flow trails, slope-style trails, a climbing hill, jump lines and a rock skills trail. There’s also a bike playground for kids and novices.
The park has paved trails, instead of dirt trails, which means they won’t be unusable after bad weather and they should be easier to maintain.
The majority of the Bike Yard’s bike features were completed last fall, but the park will be completely finished this week, said Susan Vincent, a city of Dayton planner II. The official ribbon-cutting ceremony takes place at 11:30 a.m. Saturday.
“People have been enthusiastically using the park since the fall,” Vincent said.
The Dayton Bike Yard already has been attracting visitors from outside the area and other states on a regular basis, and the people it brings to the Miami Valley are spending money at local businesses, supporters say.
“People drive from great distances around the United States just to visit bike parks,” said Dawn Allen, who served as the president of the Miami Valley Mountain Bike Association from 2020 to 2022. “When people visit, and they come to ride, they stay and spend money.”
This project has been in the works for six or seven years, and the end result was worth the wait because this is a world-class and competition-level bike park, Allen said.
This is at least the third outdoor mountain bike park to open across the Miami Valley region in the last several years.
Allen said this bike park is very special, and someone would have to drive hours to find something of this quality and size.
Allen said she hopes residents and families who live in the surrounding neighborhoods will take ownership and advantage of the park and will use it frequently.
“It will prove itself to be one of the greatest assets for the city of Dayton,” she said. “This is going to put Dayton on the map for sure, when it comes to recreational cycling activities.”
Brandon Botschner, 39, of Oakwood, has visited the Dayton Bike Yard about once a week for months.
Botschner is big into mountain biking, and with the Bike Yard close by, he’s been honing his skills and trying out jumps.
“I think it’s great, I think it’s awesome,” he said. “I hope the neighborhoods can get engaged, and I think they are doing a lot of that stuff.”
The Bike Yard has something for riders of all ages, he said.
Parts of the park are perfectly suitable for young kids on strider bikes (balance bikes without pedals). Most of the main attractions are for older riders and members of the biking scene, but there’s something for people of all skill levels.
Credit: JIM NOELKER
Credit: JIM NOELKER
Dan McIntyre, 42, of Middletown, said he brought his kids on his first visit to the Bike Yard, and they had really a good time.
But he also liked coming without them, because that gave him a chance to challenge himself.
“This time, I don’t have them as an excuse not to hit the big jumps,” he said.
Bike Yard grand opening events on Saturday include:
10 a.m. Bicycles for all maintenance clinic
11 a.m., Bike Miami Valley bike parade
11:30 a.m. ribbon cutting and community bike fund graduation
12:30 p.m. DK Bikes pump track ride
1:30 p.m. Mike’s Bike Park jump line ride
2:30 Bike Miami Valley flow trail ride
2:45 p.m. Bike Show awards announced
All day: Local food trucks, vendor and community tables, rent and ride a bike, DJ Ivan Perdue and True Colors
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