Volunteers Get To Work Renovating Eagan Bike Park

Eagan MN

07 April, 2021

3:23 PM

Description

EAGAN, MN— A group of volunteers met on Saturday to reshape the Eagan Bike Park. One of the volunteers, Jeff McKoskey, said he believed the park, located next to the Lexington-Diffley Skate Park, was built around 10-12 years ago. Since then, the bike park has been rebuilt by various groups, but members of these groups either moved away from the park, going to the bike park in Cottage Grove instead, or simply aged out of BMX and dirt jump biking, leaving the park largely unoccupied by biking groups, McKoskey said. "The last group that was here significantly was maybe five or six years ago," he said. "They did a full rebuild with heavy equipment and really created the lines that are there now." After the last group left, the park wasn't getting maintained very often anymore, McKoskey said. "I saw it and I thought that tuning it up and making it rideable would be a fairly minimal amount of work," he said. "If there's interest in the community, then let's see if we can create a core group of people that are interested in doing that." Five volunteers showed up Saturday to reshape take-offs and landings, some even coming from Burnsville and Minnetonka to help reshape the park, McKoskey said. The Eagan Bike Park supplied the volunteers with tools and tips to help them reshape the park, McKoskey said. McKoskey told Patch that he hopes the group's efforts will increase the usage of the bike park, and make it easier for kids to get into BMX and dirt jump biking, especially those unable to drive to Cottage Grove. McKoskey grew up building and doing bike jumps, though now he just mountain bikes, he told Patch. "It was something I really enjoyed as a kid," McKoskey said. "The idea of maintaining that for the youth here in Eagan and nearby communities seemed like something worth doing, and a way to be a part of the community and to create opportunities for kids."