Although a petition opposing St. Albert’s planned demolition of a beloved homemade bike skills park garnered over 2,000 signatures, city council will not consider any change to the city's plans for Lachance Park.
One glimmer of hope for disappointed bikers is a recognition from city councillors that St. Albert needs to start pushing “sooner rather than later” for building a city-run bike skills park.
On May 21, city councillors were given a rundown on plans for Lachance Park in a workshop. The park is going up this summer where the St. Albert ‘dirt jumps’ have been a gathering space for teens for years, possibly as far back as the '80s.
Fifteen-year-old Brennan MacDonald initiated the petition to save the dirt jumps and told the Gazette at the beginning of May seeing the beloved bike park turned into a “generic” kids' park “is awful.”
While city workers have already begun work on flattening some of the bigger jumps, construction for Lachance Park is set to begin in June.
On any given summer day, MacDonald said there are typically 20 kids gathered at the park who hoist their shovels to work on bike features of their own design.
But city staff said since St. Albert took ownership of the park from a developer in 2017, there has been a shift from small casual bike loops to unstable and dangerous jumps, and large burrow pits that are tripping hazards.
The city has incorporated some design elements from the existing bike network at the time of design, and senior parks development project manager Manda Wilde said only one resident-made bike path will be lost.
Terrain features will not meet the need of older, more skilled bikers who utilize bike jumps, she added.
St. Albert has received a lot of input on the dirt jumps as a result of MacDonald’s petition and the resulting publicity. Wilde said most of it centered on keeping kids “playing in the dirt.”
“It's good intentions, but it is the city's responsibility to manage the park spaces for all users, and with safety as the priority,” she said. “Damage to city property, destruction of our trees and natural vegetation, and building of structures that are not safe for public use should not be able to continue.”
City staff said council could choose to delay construction of Lachance Park – or even redesign the park – but advised against both of those options. Reasons given included increased project cost, park equity in new neighbourhoods, and implying a willingness to change park designs outside of established designs.
Mayor Cathy Heron acknowledged there is a “desperate need” for doing whatever it takes to have a bike skills park, referencing emails council has received about kids taking their shovels to areas of Riverside and Kingswood.
She also asked about the potential to remove the playground in designs for Lachance Park to include more bike loops.
Coun. Wes Brodhead said after receiving all the information, he would be willing to sit down and craft a motion to construct a bike skills park in St. Albert, once a parcel of land can be located.
City staff had noted the Lachance Park parcel would not be big enough for a full bike skills park.
Councillors and city staff agreed land set aside in the Range Road 260 area structure plan and donated by Rohit Land Development earlier this year for a future recreation facility would be a perfect location.
“I think I'm OK if we need to push forward sooner rather than later in getting a bike skills park as part of the plans for the Rohit lands, and make that really public and get excited about that,” said Heron. “That's probably a good compromise and this Lachance Park has given us that kick in the butt to make sure that happens.”
