Springside Pump Track Planners Want Time, City Commitment By Brittany Polito, iBerkshires Staff
05:10AM / Monday, June 24, 2024 | |
PITTSFIELD, Mass. — Planners of the Springside bike skills park would like more support from the city and more time but the Parks Commission is ready to see wheels moving.
They first came to the commission in 2020 looking to donate a pump track and bike skills park to Pittsfield, citing the plot behind Reid Middle School as a great spot for accessibility to the Morningside neighborhood.
In four years, the cost of asphalt alone has doubled. The 2021 design's cost is seeing a reported increase of about 50 percent, originally quoted for $400,000.
Recognizing the need to pivot, planners last month asked the commission for more time to re-evaluate the project and fundraise. They were expected to present a "goal for a new approach towards the same goal" and "concrete options" in July but, upon request, that was extended to August during last Tuesday's meeting.
This could include a budget or phased design.
"The process to get us to this point has been arduous, at the least, to come to an agreement on what is the best fit. To be clear, we wouldn't even be having this conversation if we didn't feel that it was a positive thing for the park but the applicant came to us with it," Commissioner Anthony DeMartino said.
"This is not the city soliciting an opportunity to put a new feature into our park."
He said the commission would like to "kick the dust" off this project because it has been treading water for so long.
"We want to see progress and movement on it because we haven't seen much for a while."
Garrett Pulley of the Berkshire Mountain Bike Training Series is "curious how invested the city is as a whole," pointing to terms in the memorandum of understanding that puts maintenance responsibilities on the biking organizations involved and expressing a want for financial support.
Commissioners expressed that they have supported the project for years.
"The way I sort of read all of this is that we're just getting permission and nothing else from the city and, again, high-level statement but it is tough," he said.
"It's tough to see how we're going to fund this, how we're going to take care of this. It's all being done by volunteer work that this is just our it's not even our second job."
Pulley said the buy-in he is hoping to regain is assistance in facilitation. He asked if the city could help the planners secure grant funding or market their fundraising efforts.
"Does the city have any way to help raise the extra funds for, frankly, like a requirement you guys really need," he said. "This is something the city needs and we want to give that to you but yeah, having a little bit of extra funds to go towards that requirement that would be a big milestone for us."
Alison McGee of the Berkshire New England Mountain Biking Association, who originally proposed the project, said looking at ways the commission and the city could potentially be invested intros doesn't always need a financial investment.
Pulley would also like to "go back to the MOU," as "the responsibility that I feel like is being put on these organizations as a whole, the feeling that I got was that you really don't believe us." It was signed between the city, New England Mountain Bike Association, Shire Shredders, and Berkshire Mountain Bike Training Series.
The MOU, approved early this year, stipulates that money raised for the demolition of the park will be held in a city fund with half of the initial cost given back in a five-year period and the remaining 50 percent given back in a 10-year period if not used.
It also stipulates that the organizations maintain the park under a plan that is developed as part of the formal design process, obtain an insurance policy naming the city as an additional insured, and that either party can terminate the agreement if there are insufficient funds raised for the construction and removal.
"Revisiting that is probably — I don't want to say it's off the table, but it's not very much on the table," said DeMartino.
"Getting us to that point was an inordinate amount of work on our part, all the organizations involved, the city."
He said this is an "enormous investment" of space and resources and if the bike skills park is not well maintained, it becomes a burden to the city.
McGee said a recent bicycle film festival raised about a thousand dollars and a majority of it is hoped to go to the bike skills park. She also reminded the commission that there is a matching donor interested in the project.
"I know that when I was originally bringing forward and saying that we would fund it in full, a large part of that drive and the same thing with the putting it forward as an entire project was to expedite it and that was the goal behind that was if we are able to do this and have this happen quickly while we have these this budget, that was the motivator for that," she said.
"For me and in speaking with people who are partnering with me now, that's part of why that is coming up again because the expediting didn't happen and so it changes the reality a bit and so not trying to backtrack on what was presented for sure. I do want to make sure you understand that when we said that, that was meant with full intention but it was the intention was to try to make it easier and more direct, which it hasn't really been."
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