FAYETTEVILLE -- Members of the Ozark Off Road Cyclists mountain biking club are planning some major improvements to the roughly 7-mile soft-surface trail at Lake Fayetteville they've built and maintained for the past several years.
The biggest additions are a "pump track" and two "skills courses" -- one for beginners and one for more advanced riders -- on the northwest side of the lake, near a parking lot for the North Shore Disc Golf course.
Meeting Info
In other business Monday, members of Fayetteville’s Parks and Recreation Advisory Board gave Fayetteville Girl Scouts permission to build a “hammock hotel” in Wilson Park.
The hotel will consist of eight, roughly 12-foot-long posts that will be driven 5 feet into the ground.
The posts will have hooks, so people can hang their hammocks on them rather than tying them to trees.
Source: Staff report
According to the club's president emeritus, Phil Penny, the pump track will be a 200- to 300-foot fiberglass loop. Bikers will be able to use a pumping motion to traverse the track without pedaling.
The wooden skills courses will have various hills and curves mountain bikers can use to perfect their craft.
"It'll go around trees and around places where people can sit and watch their kids ride," Penny told members of the Parks and Recreation Advisory Board on Monday.
The club also plans to move a section of trail out of a fairway for the disc golf course, repair erosion problems in the northwest corner of the park and build a 6-foot-tall "wall ride" north of the parking lot, between the paved Lake Fayetteville trail and South Turner Street.
Other sections of the soft-surface trail, including a stretch along a small peninsula on the south end of the Lake Fayetteville spillway, are also set for improvement. The Ozark Off Road Cyclists plan to erect fences in one area of the trail to keep users on a defined path.
Members of the parks board voted unanimously in favor of the group's plans, which are expected to cost about $150,000.
Penny said the nonprofit mountain biking club is in the process of raising money for the improvements, which could begin by the end of the year.
The Fayetteville Parks and Recreation Department will provide 300 cubic yards of dirt to reshape berms and fight erosion.
Also on Monday, the parks board gave staff the go-ahead to prepare a grant application for an Outdoor Recreation grant from the Arkansas Department of Parks and Tourism.
Alison Jumper, parks planning superintendent, said city officials plan to ask the state for $150,000-$175,000 in matching money to pay for a new playground and several Americans with Disabilities Act-accessible parking spaces at Wilson Park.
The application deadline for the Outdoor Recreation grant is Aug. 28. The City Council still must approve the request.
Jumper said she expects to find out if the city will receive one of the state grants sometime in spring 2016.
NW News on 07/07/2015