The new bike park is under construction in Riverton Trolley Park at the corner of Riverside Street and Forest Avenue. Sophie Burchell / The Forecaster

Riverton Trolley Park will continue its legacy of providing thrills to Portland residents. What was a weekend trolley destination in the 19th century and an amusement park in the 20th century will soon offer a 21st-century rush: that of jumping a mountain bike off a 3-foot berm.

On Oct. 1, Maine Trail Builders began construction on a bike park in the corner of Riverton Trolley Park on Forest Avenue and Riverside Street. The project came out of the Portland Park Conservancy asking the public what they wanted to see in the underutilized park with the goal of increasing use of the space. The bike park is expected to be completed in six weeks and available for use in the spring.

“We need activation at this park, mountain bikers are already here. It was highlighted as an active use that felt compatible with the woodland setting,” said Tatyana Vashchenko, parks project manager for the city of Portland, which partnered with Portland Parks Conservancy on the project.

The completed bike park will include a pump track consisting of corners and rollers, a wooden starting platform for bikers to gain speed, dirt jumps ranging in size and difficulty, drop zones for bikers to practice riding off ledges, and wooden “skinnies” that function as balance beams for mountain bikes. Maine Trail Builders, a mountain bike-oriented trail building company, is constructing the features.

This project began in 2021 when the Portland Parks Conservancy identified Riverton Trolley Park as being underutilized and uninviting to the public. Aside from games played on the Little League baseball field, much of the park was not in use, said Vashchenko. The entrance to the park was not welcoming and the trails were unclear, she said. The section of Riverton Trolley Park that is becoming the bike park was a wooded area with brambles and ash trees that were succumbing to the invasive emerald ash borer beetle.

In March 2021, the Portland Parks Conservancy held a community meeting to gather the public input about the future use of the Riverton Trolley Park. Other community outreach included online surveys and on-site tours of the park throughout 2021.

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“That public engagement process identified a laundry list of improvements that rose up as high priority. Mountain biking was one of them,” she said.

The park’s other rejuvenation projects that will take place in the spring include paving the dirt parking lot to increase accessibility, improving interpretive signage about the park’s history and making trails more welcoming and accessible. Maine Trail Builders will construct a path that connects the bike park to the Presumpscot River trail network nearby.

The idea of converting an area of the park to serve mountain bikes was promoted by the Greater Portland chapter of the New England Mountain Bike Association and local mountain bikers including Stu Johnson, owner and lead builder of Maine Trail Builders.

The bike park in Riverton Trolley Park is expected to be completed at the end of November, with full use  starting in the spring. Sophie Burchell / The Forecaster

“(Bike parks) can be really fun for a wide range of users, especially for little kids that are just getting comfortable on their scoot bikes,” said Johnson. “Adults will ride around as well and depending on how you design it, as you get better you can develop some speed and jump over different sections and whatnot.

“It becomes a pretty playful thing as well, or it can just be a really basic way to develop some bike handling and some confidence with biking,” he said.

The closest tracks and jumps for Portland mountain bikers are at a series of tracks in Gorham and at Blackstrap Hill Preserve in Falmouth. Johnson said he is excited that the Riverton Trolley bike park will be closer and connected to the Presumpscot River trails, expanding who can reach the park by bike.

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Ben Sawyer works at the Portland bike shop CycleMania, which sells all types of bicycles including mountain bikes, as well as biking accessories. He had just heard about the project.

“I was just happy to hear that there’s more trail getting built nearby, and that there would be some jumps in the area,” said Sawyer.

“There’s been growth in mountain biking in the area, and I think this is definitely a nice step in the right direction,” he said.

Portland Parks Conservancy led the fundraising campaign for the Riverton Trolley Park revitalization. In March 2023, the project was awarded a federal grant administered by the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Land and Water Conservation Fund for half of the cost. The other half was funded by the city of Portland and private donations. In May of 2022, Battery Steele Brewing hosted a fundraiser in support of the bike park and released the limited edition “Trolley Trax IPA.”

As the bike project gets underway two years later, the first step was the city cutting down the infected ash trees that would pose a danger to bike park users. In the spring, the city and volunteers plan to plant more resilient native plant species around the bike track, said Vashchenko.

In the meantime, Maine Trail Builders employee Ben Portnoy carefully maneuvered a mini excavator around the vegetation that was marked as healthy. It was Portnoy’s second day on the job at Maine Trail Builders. While he is experienced in outdoor work, Portnoy described himself as a mountain bike enthusiast foremost. He said since recently moving to Portland, he has been impressed with the active cycling community.

“This place is going to be awesome,” he said.

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