New La Crosse bicycle playground on track for completion next month

A skate park will also soon to be a bike park. The new bicycle playground at La Crosse’s Leuth Park off Lang Drive is set to be complete next month.

The 25,000-square-foot development is a bicycle playground of sorts, according to Jed Olson with the Outdoor Recreation Alliance, the group that’s spearheaded the project.

It will be for bikers of all ages, says Olson, as there will be pretty much something there for everyone.

“The whole park emcompasses — much like a playground — different things that you can use in your own creative way, and move kind of multi-directionally through the park in using all these different features,” Olson said. “Two or 3 year old on a strider bike — those bikes without pedals — they can zip around and do laps, zig zagging back and forth, up and down,” Olson said. “And, a pro level, top BMX racer or mountain biker can also utilize it for training and recreation.”

Olson is coordinating the project with the City of La Crosse. The $100,000 project is being undertaken in conjunction with renovations to the skate park at Leuth Park.

A $40,000 grant from the La Crosse Community Foundation helped to fund the project as have thousands in private donations.

The park will feature a skills trail with teeter-totters and wooden bridges, as well as a pump track that allows bicyclists to work through a course without pedaling.

Social media is popping with talk it and for good reason, says Olson. He says there just isn’t anything else like it around these parts.

“There’s just probably a few, just a handful of projects that have tagged themselves as bicycle playground that have taken off but all of them have been immensely popular, and we’re the first one in the region,” he said.

The bicycle playground project is being undertaken as part of a larger renovation of Leuth park that includes repairs and updates to the skate park there.