By Lesley Walsh
AMBITIOUS plans have been submitted to create a major new £1.1m cycling hub in the centre of Bangor.
The project, including a national standard BMX track, will be based at the city’s ailing Sportsplex which has struggled in recent years due to deteriorating conditions and subsidence.
The proposals, lodged just before Christmas by Ards and North Down Council, envisage five cycling areas, integrating a cycling jump park complete with jumps, berms and rollers, with cycling areas for all ages and abilities, and zones catering for beginners up to advanced cyclists.
The new features at the Old Belfast Road site would include an accessible learn-to-ride area in a layout promoting skills development, as well as cross country (XC) trails, designed as a site loop or perimeter trail.
Once completed, the Bangor site would be added to The Cycling Ireland BMX National Series list of accredited venues across Ireland, alongside Lisburn, Meath, Dublin, Wexford and Cork, which routinely attract hundreds of children from all over the country.
The initiative, paid for by PeacePlus, aims to target the funding body’s focus on social issues like ‘disengaged youth’, and to address the concerns of 88,000 of the borough’s 164,000 population who are ‘unhappy with the local cycling infrastructure’, according to council consultations.
The capital projects, estimated to cost £1,149,000 follows assessments in recent years by council officials of possible alternatives at the ‘historically problematic site’ which has seen its track and field provision troubled by ‘deteriorating conditions’ and ‘localised subsidence’.
The plans hope to usher in a new lease of life for such athletics provision, with the park sitting alongside the existing facilities and being designed to work as part of a wider, multi- sport complex.
If given the green light, the cycling facilities would include ‘provision for adaptive cycling and clear separation between learner, intermediate and advanced zones’ but no estimated date for the start of construction has yet been suggested.
The Sportsplex plans are among three capital PeacePlus schemes that the council aims to deliver as part of its Local Action Plan, and include a pump track in Donaghadee, costed at £219,351, and a Portaferry parklands facility, estimated to cost £186,507.
The council said the site ‘will be unified by a central community café and workshop, serving as a social hub that fosters connection, collaboration, and shared wellbeing among participants of all ages and abilities’.
The local authority has described the proposals as ‘a capital project that will transform an unused piece of council-owned land, creating a pioneering community facility designed to promote health, inclusion, and social cohesion through cycling’.
“The enhanced facilities and pathways will lead to increased levels of cross community interaction and will include five separate cycling facilities.”
