The North Shore Bike Park is moving away from the North Shore.
But what will continue is the spirit of giving young riders the skills and attitude to take on the North Shore’s world-famous mountain bike terrain, its owners say.
Currently, the plywood jumps, half pipes and pump tracks inside Capilano Mall in North Vancouver are being dismantled, and eventually transported to their new home in Maple Ridge.
The business’s new location at 13065 Katonien St. is in an industrial area of the city, around a 3.5-hour bike ride (or one-hour drive) from Cap Mall.
North Shore Bike Park director James Wilson says his team is excited to set up in the new building, which has 35,000 square feet of floor space and 30-foot-high ceilings.
The new space is the former home of Air Rec Center, another bike park that closed in 2023 after around seven years of operation.
“It was created as a training centre for Red Bull-type athletes and they did a good job of that with foam pits, big jumps,” Wilson said. “It was a great training centre, but a very difficult economic model.”
“What we proved out was that indoor bike parks are really a family sport, but the greatest number of participants in the park were 12 years old,” he said, adding that after-school programming and other progressive learning opportunities really started to increase business potential at the North Shore location.
“Our model will bring thousands of people to [the new] park,” Wilson said. The ownership group is aiming for a soft launch in August, with a grand opening in September with the start of the school year.
Bike park youth will be next generation of great North Shore riders, director says
While efforts to keep the park in in the Capilano Mall location – which is rumoured to be replaced by pickleball courts – were ultimately unsuccessful, Wilson is grateful for the thousands of petitioners who tried to save it.
“A grateful thanks to everybody that rallied to try to keep the park in North Vancouver,” he said. “That was an astounding amount of support.”
What the rally to save the park really showed was the strong desire to have indoor recreational spaces for North Shore youth, Wilson said.
“It’s a fact, unstructured play is something that children really need to have, a covered space to get out of the rain so they can play. I think it’s something that our municipalities should have a good hard look at,” he said.
Wilson said that North Shore Bike Park will continue to look for opportunities in North Van in future, but right now he needs people to help them move out.
“We are in dreadful need of volunteers that can handle a drill and remove screws,” he said. “We’ll provide folks with passes or some sort of compensation for helping out.”
As the bike park carries on in Maple Ridge, it will keep the North Shore in both the business's name and spirit, Wilson said.
“North Shore is synonymous with, not only this location, but with a style of riding referred to as free ride,” he said.
Kids who have been shredding at the park over the past year have learned things like acceleration, deceleration, “air sense,” and riding in close quarters with confidence. These skills are the building blocks of freeride, Wilson said.
“These [youth] are really going to be the future great riders on the North Shore,” he said.
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