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Bare Creek Bike Plan - Dedicated MTB Facilities for the Northern Beaches. Help Required Now!


Rob's picture

By Rob - Posted on 24 May 2014

Do you want a purpose built bike park on the Northern Beaches - one that is dedicated Mountain Biking? A plan is proposed for such a facility at Belrose Waste Management Centre after it closes soon, but...

Help is needed to get this plan approved. Can you help by emailing the local councillors and expressing your views? Just something simple that explains you are behind the plan is all it would take.

The next council meeting is 27th May, so these emails need to find their target before that date. If you could attend the meeting to show support all the better.

The councillor's email addresses: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]

More background can be found in this thread: Bare Creek Bike Park.

Thank you.

Black Flash's picture

Time is running out.
Have your say now!

SingleSpeedDan's picture

Email sent

gusgusset's picture

The Mayors Office.

What can I say impressed to have received replies from politicians.
The Councillors responses were positive!
and the Mayors EA thanked me for my comments and advised they were presented with a formal presentation from the State govt last week and that they will be voting on this tomorrow.

I really hope this happens!

hawkeye's picture

The staff have advised against the proposal, based on the current cost estimate to run the facility at $200k per annum, which is high by a factor of three to five times.

It is my understanding the mayor is likely to go with the staff view unless we demonstrate through numbers at the meeting the depth of support for the park.

If a club was incorporated to run the site it could be done much more cheaply.

Please suggest to councillors in your emails that they direct staff to form a working party with local rider groups such as Trail Care to progress this option urgently.

Time is of the essence. WAMC have offered the use of their resources and project management (worth $1.3m) but this is only on the table while their big yellow toys are still on site.

jp's picture

Dear Councillors,

I am writing to express my support for the proposed Bare Creek Bike Park.

I am a regular (weekly) user of the Hornsby mountain bike park at Old Mans Valley. I am a 46 year old business owner and father of 2 boys, and mountain biking has changed my life. I am healthier than ever, and love nothing more than getting out on the trails with my sons. The Hornsby facility is a great example of a forward thinking council initiative, and it has been a huge success.

I understand there is concern about the cost of maintaining the trails, but please be assured there are many, many people who will volunteer to help with maintenance. This has been a key part of the Hornsby facility's success.

I hope that you will vote in favour of the Bare Creek Bike Park proposal, and I have no doubt that if you do, it will become a part of your legacy as Councillors that you will be truly proud of.

Kind Regards,

tubby's picture

wrote to council this morning and got a response within the hour, sounds like at least one of the councillors wants it and is happy to see support piling in.

I've just been through a long battle with my council and the councillors eventually voted in favour despite staff recommendations, so it happens. 200K a year sounds a lot but in council terms it's peanuts to maintain a good facility like this.

richardgraysydney's picture

Its now 4 weeks since the last comments. Has anything happened to the proposal?

hawkeye's picture

The Mayor killed it as far as councils involvement is concerned.

He gave a great display of turd polishing by telling us how capable we all were and that we should go talk to the state government ourselves if we thought it was such a great idea.

I have no idea where the rest of the crew us up to. There was a meeting about incorporating last I heard, and some Trailcare members were going to talk to Mike Baird to try and cut through the red tape as time is now extremely short to get it up.

I am extremely pessimistic of its chances but hope to be proven wrong.

Others may have more current information as I have pulled myself out of the loop.

LadyToast's picture

I received a email from Cr Robert Giltinan yesterday who sounds optimistic about it's chances without council involvement although that does depend on the state government coming to the party. The impression I get is that the land would be "handed over to the bikers", perhaps I'm dreaming.

The other emails I received from council were also positive.

I was looking at the land again from Belrose super-centre top car park over the weekend. Turning it into a bike park really does seem like a no brainer to me.

hawkeye's picture

I don't have a problem with them wanting to avoid involvement with being responsible for a tip site. I wouldn't either.

What pisses me off is that after egging us on for 5 years, with six months to go they say "erm, no thanks not for us".

After being lulled into thinking they were on top of it, we now have to start from scratch pretty much with few resources and no funding.

Things should be at a detailed design stage by now. We need WAMC's big yellow toys on site to save us a million and a half in earthmoving and project management costs. Once they are done with the site and off it by the end of calendar year, those costs have to come out of the kitty.

Now it may be possible to negotiate an extension to be able to fit it all in, but there are multiple parties involved and the difficulty goes up exponentially.

It's very easy for Giltinan et al to sound all cheerful and optimistic when it's all words and no action.

Giltinan played his cards very well at the council meeting and did a great job of sucking the gallery into a show of hands in favour of what the mayor was selling before they knew what it meant.

Don't be conned.

It will be hard and absorb a lot of time but many hands make light work.

Any help you can provide will be welcome. Join up at www.trailcare.com.au

Simon's picture

Sorry for lack of comms, been flat out with work, renovating entire house at once plus Bantry and Bare Creek.

A quick summary, sorry it's brief.

Meet the team and our vision here http://www.barecreekbikepark.com

See FB link on page and please show support by liking us.

We are incorporated and doing what we can to make progress.

Have put forward a briefing note to Mike Baird outlining issues and ideas to move forward.

We are requesting a rethink of the project staging and approach if it is to be community run.

ido09s's picture

Have i missed another thread or has this died in the ass Sad

Anything else to add as to where it may be at, if it has in fact moved forward at all?

Simon's picture

Waiting for response at moment.

nrthrnben's picture

I heard they got an independent second estimate at $800k for annual maintenance!!. That's crazy talk, if this is true we just need to prove this wrong.
They don't want to spend money

ChopStiR's picture

Who the hell is providing these quotes and what exactly are they maintaining?

Simon's picture

meeting them this week.

Will update when I can. Might just be magic with numbers to justify why government doesn't want to manage it.

hawkeye's picture

There is probably an element of that but much of it will be a natural conservatism when dealing with something they know little about.

The way to deal with it is to get real world costs from similar facilities elsewhere. Credible supporting evidence is key - anyone can drop numbers in a spreadsheet.

DudeistPriest's picture

Sounds like a job for an accountant:)

BobaFett's picture

Is there any update on this?

I know that with giant BMX tracks which Bare creek would be (large man made structures with big swooping berms) could be very expensive to maintain based on the Jubes experiences. The IMBA style tracks cut into the side of a hill are pretty low maintenance, but you still need to put a fair amount of work into keep outslope, drains cleared etc. I think we can underestimate the amount of maintenance required to keep trails topnotch. I didnt used to think this but after maintaining OMV for a couple of years (which I would consider a low maintenance trail - particularly stage 1) I think maintenance is something that NPWS and Councils (and perhaps cyclists) do not give enough thought and planning to. Hornsby Council hasn't got the balance right yet but they are getting there. We now have a nice mix of professional maintenance and volunteers. Whats the update with what maintenance program and costs the cyclists have countered with here against Council?

Simon's picture

The DA was scheduled to have been approved end of March, we are still waiting to hear.

Maintenance is a big concern and was one of the discussion points in our Bare Creek Bike Park Inc EOI submission which again we are waiting to hear back on.

After Bare Creek Bike Park Inc's trip to Whistler and Coast Gravity last year we have highlighted some issues in terms of design and maintenance with the current concept submitted for the DA. We rode with companies such as Gravity Logic on some of their new tracks, talked through design at Bare Creek and they are keen to use their world class bike park design knowledge to help out. They have even built on land fill sites before.

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