After three years, two more children, hundreds of truckloads of dirt and thousands of hours of volunteer labor, Dave Baker’s biggest baby is nearly ready.
But before riders can officially take to the skills loop, pump track, large jumps and other features at the River Bend Bike Park, Baker said more work by volunteers and funding from donors is needed to finish off the final projects.
Baker, a captain with the Carpinteria-Summerland Fire Protection District and Lompoc resident, leads the committee working to ready the park. Those involved grew up riding bikes, building jumps and seeking “legal” places to practice their skills.
Two proposed grand opening dates have come and gone. So, when will it open?
“That’s the million-dollar question,” Baker said. “This project is 100 percent volunteer driven so it depends upon the volunteers. Unfortunately, we’re still raising money for last-minute things. We just need help out here.
“If we get all the manpower and finances that we need we could have this open in a month.”
The park project’s leaders regularly ask for volunteers on the park’s Facebook page. A month ago, 100 people showed up to work at the site. On a Saturday in November, about six people were helping.
Some of the remaining work includes fencing and benches, he noted.
“At this point, we are in the final stretch,” Baker said. “We need help with manpower, with landscaping and building some of our final features. We need financial support …”
The park is at the east end of McLaughlin Road near River Bend Park. It’s being done under the umbrella of the Lompoc Valley Parks, Recreation, and Pool Foundation and spearheaded by the River Bend Bike Park Committee.
“There’s nothing like this park in Southern California, so it’s going to be a destination location for bicycles,” Baker said.
Other areas locally have BMX competition tracks, but the Lompoc site is intended for recreational use, with people allowed to ride for free.
Baker, a father of three, said the bike park supporter began the project in 2011, getting through the necessary city approvals, permits and fundraising to start construction in 2014. Since then, he noted, he and his wife, Teresa Martinez-Baker, have had two additional children.
The intent is to give Lompoc — and those in the wide cycling community — a safe riding environment.
“When I started this, he was about 3 years old,” Baker said of his oldest son, “and I wanted to provide something for my kids and other kids in the community so they could grow up and have just one more option, instead of getting in trouble.”
While most communities have soccer and baseball fields plus basketball courts, spots for safely riding bicycles are much more limited.
“It’s just another activity to keep kids safe, active and healthy,” Baker added.
Local contractors donated dirt from projects, bringing some 500 truckloads to help build the various features and forms that make up the park.
For the park to be built, they needed to line up a professional designer and connected with Nat Lopes of Hilride Progession Development Group .
Lopes has built parks of all sizes and complexities throughout the United States.
“His job is to keep the park safe and design it fun and challenging, as well. There’s something for everybody at our park,” Baker said.
Lopes is more than a designer, showing up every few weeks to supervise and help with construction working alongside the core of volunteers putting their sweat into the project.
“This is a big-scale project especially for a volunteer build,” he said of Lompoc’s seven-acre park. “Our footprint here is probably about 50 percent of that seven acres so we literally have about three-and-half solid acres of terrain that’s been sculpted including a number of pump tracks, a dirt jump zone and what we’re working on today is the skills trail. All of this elements designed make it a progression based bike park.”
That means young or new riders can show up to hone basic skills while advanced riders can be challenged on bigger jumps, jump tracks and skills features.
He said he really likes projects like Lompoc’s because it combines the different types, attracting mountain bikers, BMX riders, jumpers and racers.
“It mixes all the different disciplines together, which is really fun,” he added. “It’s not just the BMX hard-core scene, it’s families.”
— Noozhawk North County editor Janene Scully can be reached at jscully@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.