“Long overdue” Fort Collins bike park gets proposed on old Hughes Stadium location

Fort Collins may be finally getting a large-scale bike park, similar to Valmont Bike Park down in Boulder, and all it took was for Colorado State (CSU) to build an on-campus football stadium.

              When CSU football moved to now-called Canvas Stadium for the 2017 season, they left behind the stadium that they had used for almost fifty years, Hughes Stadium, which sits underneath the “A” on the far west side of the city. It had been used since 1968 and had hosted a couple of concerts as well, but was always lacking fan support since it was a few miles away from CSU’s campus, which meant that anyone who didn’t have their own transportation had to take a bus to the stadium. This led CSU to build Canvas Stadium, which cost them over $200 million but was on the south side of campus, so many students could now walk to games and tailgate on the intramural fields.

As for Hughes Stadium, it was demolished soon after in 2018, leaving behind over 160 acres of rocks and dirt (and a disc golf course) that CSU didn’t know what to with. They mulled their options for the sizable property, which included housing space and an open park area, before the city voted in 2021 to rezone the area to “Public Open Lands,” after a measure passed a city-wide vote on what to do with the land.

The university agreed to sell the property to the city later that same year, so now the city has to decide what to do with it, and one of the options is a freely accessible mountain bike park. The land cost the city $12.5 million, according to Ginny Sawyer, the Project and Policy Manager of Fort Collins.

“The City is still in the process of acquiring the land from CSU,” added Sawyer. There are still some signs pointing to the University as being owners on the land, although it is mostly empty as of now.

              The city has done a couple of public surveys on what to do with the land, and a lot of mountain bikers have voted for a bike park for the property. They have also hosted a meeting for residents to speak for and against the bike park, with some saying it is unnecessary and too expensive, whilst some people argued that it would allow children to be active and health. Over eighty residents came to speak at the public meeting back in early March of this year, with many mountain bikers in the city coming out in force during the event.

Now, it still needs to get plans done and approved by the city, which will happen some time in the future.

“I don’t think City has any thoughts on a bike park beyond recognizing there is a desire for one,” says Sawyer.

              “There is no plan yet on when it will get finished,” says Kenny Bearden of the Overland Mountain Bike Association (OMBA), who are overseeing the project.

OMBA is a mountain biking advocacy group that focuses on Northern Colorado and Wyoming, and are overseeing the development of this bike park from when it begun to when it is completed. He also says that preliminary trail designs are happening right now with some CSU engineering students.

              OMBA’s goal is for the Fort Collins bike park to rival Valmont bike park in Boulder, which is famous in the mountain biking scene for its large variety of features and trails in a semi-urban setting and opened in 2011. That bike park is only 42 acres, but packs a lot into its small space, whereas the property here in Fort Collins being almost four times that. The city and organizers are wanting to build other recreational facilities in addition to the bike park.

              “It is long overdue,” says Bearden, also noting that “many residents here make trips down to Boulder.”

              However, not all will be smooth sailing for the park, as many have pointed out the city could focus its resources onto problems within the city and improving other natural areas with the money that could be spent on this new park. Also, it could take years before it is even complete, and it may not have the desired impact that organizers hope it will even if it does get built.

              “It took us a number of years to get where we are right now,” said Michael Rossi, who is the supervisor of Valmont City Park in Boulder.

Fort Collins has built and improved its biking infrastructure over the years, becoming one of the premier biking cities in the US. This includes several miles of paved trails snaking all throughout the city, as well as several dirt trails at Lory State Park and the Horsetooth Mountain Open Space.