What’s the Deal with Westlake?

As of January 2024 the City has accepted a bid for the infrastructure work. Commence date is currently TBD.

As City of Bozeman re-bids phase 1, we check in with the status of the dirt jumps. For the better part of a decade, SWMMBA has been working on a permanent dirt jump course at Westlake Park in central Bozeman. Prior to 2015, a few progressive jump lines were constructed and ridden frequently, but when Midtown redevelopment plans were set in motion to create the Aspen festival street, required infrastructure like utilities, sidewalks, and increased parking resulted in the jumps needing to be demolished. In anticipation, SWMMBA worked with the City to develop preliminary designs for a new, fully sanctioned course that would dovetail with the existing BMX course and complement the broader Westlake Park overhaul.

In partnership with the Parks and Recreation Department,  SWMMBA and Gallatin Valley BMX began fundraising to set the project in motion. The project has received funding from the “cash-in-lieu of parkland” grant program administered by Parks and Recreation and approved by the City Commission, and through a generous investment by the Midtown Urban Renewal District.

Road construction on Aspen and 5th began in 2020, resulting in the full demolition of the previous jumps in the fall of 2021. In the succeeding years, the adjacent infrastructure work wrapped up and landscape architects and engineers began the design and permitting process for the park. In May of 2023, the City of Bozeman was finally ready to put a bid out for the remaining utility, stormwater, and grading work that is required to prepare for the reconstruction of the dirt jumps. Over that three-year span, multiple public meetings took place, and various park stakeholders, including Gallatin Valley BMX, the Children's Memorial Garden, and the neighborhood collaborated to get to a design that will create a lively and cohesive park.  

In the course of this project’s timeline, Bozeman and the region at large experienced unprecedented growth and corresponding development. The North 7th corridor exploded with projects, private and public alike. Costs skyrocketed and demand for contractor services has never been higher. When the City bid this project the first time, zero contractors submitted an application. As a result, the project has not yet progressed.

Now, several years after initiating the rebuild, the City has once again put the infrastructure phase of the park overhaul out for bid with a deadline of July 21, 2023. Park Planning and Development Manager, Addi Jadin reported that “there is interest from a few firms, but it is still unclear if anyone will submit as this construction season is getting shorter and shorter. If no bids are received a second time around, we will explore moving forward with smaller phases of the larger park project so that the dirt jumps can finally reopen in 2024.”  

The July deadline came and went and once again the City received zero bids for the necessary infrastructure. As a result, they are moving forward with smaller phases. As of September 26, 2023, engineering firm Sanderson Stewart and the City are communicating with a civil construction firm who is interested and could get work started this fall. The City is awaiting their bid to see if it fits within the engineer's estimate. This will make it much easier to advertise for landscaping firms for next spring, depending on what’s accomplished before the snow flies.  Additionally, Sanderson Stewart is working with Northwestern Energy as a first step needed to move a transformer on site.

Until the infrastructure is in place, SWMMBA cannot proceed with implementation of the dirt jumps, although design work has been finalized and some prefabricated features are already in storage waiting to be incorporated.

While this might seem like the “forever project,” the timeline is pretty standard. For example, Copper City was in development behind the scenes for at least a decade before any dirt was moved. Start to finish, those trails took closer to 15 years to complete.

Once the infrastructure work is done, SWMMBA is ready to restart construction of the dirt jumps, incorporating Integrated Trail Labs’ design into a much-improved Westlake Park. We hope the new course will serve as an informal headquarters of sorts for the Bozeman SWMMBA chapter, The Dirt Concern, and a community gathering spot for mountain bikers of all stripes.

To view the City’s re-bid announcement, click here. If you have further questions related to the City’s process at this site, please contact Park Planning and Development Manager Addi Jadin at ajadin@bozeman.net.