By Derek Cornet

BORA building bike skills park in La Ronge

Oct 31, 2018 | 12:00 PM

The Boreal Outdoor Recreation Association (BORA) has been given the go-ahead to construct an outdoor skills park for bikes near the Mel Hegland Uniplex.

La Ronge Council recently approved a funding request by BORA for $7,800 in order to match a grant in the same amount from the provincial Community Initiatives Fund. According to BORA volunteer Dr. Dan Irvine, the organization currently has $17,000 to spend on the project and will begin purchasing equipment by the end of December. Construction work is expected to start in the spring.

“We have a company designing our skills park as we speak,” Irvine said. “They have satellite images of the area and they are starting to draw up plans. We expect this will be a multi-stage park and over time we can draw up more funds and add more terrain to the area.”

The location of the skills park will be located between the Uniplex, Churchill Community High School and the La Ronge Child Care Co-operative. Irvine noted it will primarily be built for young people to use, but added it will be open to people of all ages. The park will largely be focused on developing balancing skills and learning tricks, which Irvine said would get less kids off the road who use plywood and milk crates as an alternative.

During the summer, BORA also hosted mountain biking clinics at the Don Allen Trails and Irvine said it was popular with many people. The distance to the trails, however, is an obstacle in getting more residents involved, Irvine mentioned, as everyone doesn’t have access to the site. He believes having a skills park built right in town would serve to boost the number of people interested in biking in the community.

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“It will be on trails primarily with skills components built right in, so learning how to bike on slightly elevated board walks, and going up a ramp and down the other side without necessarily getting air,” Irvine said. “I would love to see a skills park that can be designed and put together for about $100,000, but that would be over a significant amount of time.”

La Ronge Mayor Ron Woytowich said he was supportive of the project because it fits in with an outdoor recreational vision the town wants to provide. He noted BORA did all the planning for the skills park and he was happy to learn the organization was targeting young people in the endeavour.

“They have done all the work to set it up and it’s a really good thing,” Woytowich said. “The location which has been chosen is going to be inducive to the youth being able to use the park.”

derek.cornet@jpbg.ca

Twitter: @saskjourno