A capital campaign is being launched to build an indoor Olympic-level bicycle motocross, or BMX, track and cycling park in central Iowa.
One of the effort’s organizers, Bobby Kennedy, operations manager of the Des Moines Street Collective, says the proposed facility would be an excellent resource for community wellness that would promote access to sports and recreation. Kennedy says BMX involves both bike racing and freestyle.
“Basically, you’re racing on a short course, like a quarter mile, and you’re going over what we call pumps. You have doubles, tables, things that basically either force you to adjust yourself on the bike as you’re moving, or to go into midair,” Kennedy says, “and freestyle is more what you’d see like in a skate park where you can do tricks, jumps, things like that.”
The plans call for a 200,000 square foot facility that could cost between five and nine-million dollars.
“What we’re hoping to put in is a full BMX race track, but then also a skills park,” Kennedy says. “It’d be a place where you can practice drops like ledges, a pump track, and then dirt winds as well. We’re aiming big, so it’d be nice if we had some actual single-track style, maybe wooden features where people could practice mountain biking in the winter.”
There’s also discussion of building a steeply banked track, called a velodrome, for bike racing within the facility. Cycling is huge in Iowa and Kennedy says there are no indoor tracks near this level in the state.
“The nice thing about an indoor track is constancy, which is not how you talk about Iowa weather,” Kennedy says. “So basically, we’re looking at something that people would be able to use on a day-to-day basis, no matter if it’s 120 degrees outside or negative 20.”
Under the capital campaign, backers have 12 months to raise $47,000 to pay for a feasibility study on the track, and Kennedy says they’ve already raised $16,000 toward the goal.