Shore Acres Bike Park is in Saugatuck, MI, adjacent to Saugatuck Dunes State Park and the Felt Mansion, and is home to a short singletrack trail and dirt jumps. It offers up a great opportunity to build out bike features that the community has been clamoring for. MEMBA has seen growing interest in the park and the land owners are supportive of an improvement plan.
Objectives
Two objectives to start:
- Come up with a plan for what we’d like to do at the park. This will be presented to the folks at Laketown Township for approval
- Build a team of volunteers for the build and ongoing maintenance
What currently exists
First off: there are some other park users we need to be considerate of. The disc golf course gets a lot of traffic and we definitely want to make sure we’re continuing to be good neighbors, supporting that use of the park, and not infringing on the course. Other important uses to be aware of are the state park (which does not allow bikes), tourism at the Felt Estate, and critical dune zones.
History
Oh, where to start…
Well, for the purpose of staying on topic, let’s stick to bikes… ? The singletrack was initially built ~1999 and the ABA BMX track (Xtreme BMX of Laketown) was abandoned around that time. This info came from an old MMBA forum thread. The BMX track was reformed into an A and B line of dirt jumps in 2011, which have eroded to what sits there now. Some of the material from the BMX track was also used to help armor the singletrack.
How to help
Complete this survey! If you have any questions, comments, pictures (BMX track maybe?!), history, spooky urban legends: send ’em on over to shoreacres@ridememba.com!