The confidence of Scott Bentley and Mark Summers grows with every spy.
The lurkers, mostly teenage males, peer inside the darkened warehouse where the duo have spent months hammering plywood jumps. When spotted, the young men usually zoom away on dirt-crusted bikes, but on a recent afternoon one man in his early 20s broke his cover.
“I'm Cam,” he said, thrusting a neon-green-gloved hand toward Mr. Bentley.
He's been hanging around for weeks, Cam Sprowl explained, because he heard this could be the antidote to winter doldrums and salt-rusted bike chains.
“I was riding in the snow last year and that's no fun,” he said.
Music to Mr. Bentley and Mr. Summers's ears.
Until now, Canadian mountain and dirt-bike enthusiasts living outside British Columbia have faced a hard choice come the first snowfall: Either start snowboarding, or haul your bike down to Cleveland, home of the first and largest indoor bike park in North America. The 130,000-square-foot facility, called Ray's Indoor Mountain Bike Park, has drawn riders from as far away as Montreal and Vancouver.
Now Mr. Bentley and Mr. Summers are building their own version of Ray's north of the border. When JoyRide One50 Indoor Bike Park (www.joyride150.com) opens in December, they say it will be Canada's first multidiscipline indoor bike park.
“We want to make it really easy for people to come ride here,” Mr. Bentley said during a recent tour of the 90,000-square-foot warehouse located in Markham, a suburb about 35 kilometres north of downtown Toronto.
Whether beginner or pro, slow-paced or daredevil, riders will find something tailored to their skill level. In the BMX zone, beginners can fly off jumps into a foam pit, while more advanced jumpers land on plywood ramps. Then they can move on to bowls, wall rides, spines and vertical ramps – all made of plywood.
For riders looking to build endurance, a 750-metre-long cross-country loop, suspended 12 feet in the air, winds around the entire warehouse. There's also a beginner area and rolling pump track. Eventually, a zone inspired by mountains on the north shore near Vancouver will showcase technical features like teeter-totters and rails. They've also planned a spin studio for parents who want a workout after dropping off their kids.
Mr. Bentley, a media producer, and Mr. Summers, a contractor and father of three, quit their jobs and poured their life savings into a project that matches their passion for riding (they both race competitively). After a year of planning, and three months of stress, slivers and unexpected delays – they're anxious to open.
But are there enough riders to sustain it?
Brendan Arnold, high-performance manager at the Ontario Cycling Association, thinks so. The popularly of BMX and freestyle riding has grown rapidly in recent years, he says, and has also been fuelled by inclusion of BMX racing in the 2008 Beijing Olympics. But currently, kids are forced to either practise in places like underground parking lots, or in the case of the provincial team he coaches, travel to Florida for training camps.
“One thing that is lacking in Ontario is places for kids to ride in the wintertime,” he said, adding it will be a good spot for kids to concentrate on fundamentals. “Hopefully we'll get some coaches involved.”
Tyler Mains, an editor with the online cycling magazine PinkBike.com, says a spot like this wouldn't fly on the relatively balmy west coast, but he says easterners should be on board. “Because it's snowy out east. That's why Ray's is so awesome.”
But the man himself – Ray Petro, who pioneered the concept of the multidiscipline indoor mountain-bike park when he opened his giant facility five years ago – is less optimistic.
“My place just barely works as far as finances go. So we'll see how they do,” he said in a phone interview from Cleveland.
He also questioned the Canadians' plan to remain open year-round, in order to offer summer camps.
“For me it's not even worth setting someone at the front desk and turning the light on,” he said. “Everybody wants to be outside.”
If he sounds unimpressed, that may be because tension has divided the two groups. About two years ago, Mr. Bentley's wife, Shannon, produced a television segment about Ray's for the Discovery Channel's Daily Planet .
After that, the couple, along with Mr. Summers and his wife, made the five-hour trip to Cleveland for a weekend of riding, and Ray says the group peppered him with questions about his business. Ray says they never told him at the time that they intended to open an indoor bike park.
He feels “flattered,” he says, but also a little duped.
“I've got five years of pain getting the formula right, and they got the formula for free,” he says.
The Canadians say they were inspired by Ray's “awesome” facility. But they also say that they were up front about their intention to build something similar. But Mr. Summers said that once he informed Mr. Petro that they had secured financing, Mr. Petro clammed up, and the two groups stopped speaking.
Mr. Bentley says having two big indoor facilities can only be good for the sport.
“It's not like we want to bring the same people from Ray's up here,” he said. “We want to introduce the sport to thousands more people.”
With that in mind, Mr. Bentley and Mr. Summers say their priority is having a BMX park ready for opening day. They know the patience of their teenage clientele is wearing thin, based on posts like this one on JoyRide's Facebook page: “when the hell is it opening?!” wrote Bruce Wilkinson.
Cam Sprowl, for his part, waved goodbye with this comment: “See you at the end of the month.”
