Well, Jason St. Romain asked if anyone had an update from the BREC meeting so I figured I'd let everyone know what I heard/saw.

The entire Perkins Rd. park is scheduled to be transformed into an "Extreme Park". This meeting was to get feedback from people in the community about what types of activities/amenities they would like to see included in the plan for the park. Rock climbing walls, mountain bike trails, dirt jumps, yoga classes- all of this stuff was on the table. BREC had several proposed layouts drawn up by a landscape architect in Baton Rouge. The architect did a wonderful job of drawing out a really cool conception of what the park would look like, however he was not completely educated on the ins & outs of skateboarding and BMX.

An example of this would be the two separate BMX racing tracks (the one we have now barely gets used- there is no need for two tracks). Also, both conceptual designs featured concrete skateparks which would not allow bikes. I, along with Tommy and Rory, talked at length with the architect about the need to allow bikes into the concrete skatepark. We talked about the use of pegs in concrete parks and gave him examples of concrete parks that allow both bikes and skateboards. I really believe he just wasn't aware of the amount of bike riders in Baton Rouge. Which leads me to another fact; everyone in charge of the meeting was VERY surprised at the amount of riders who showed up at the meeting. I know while I was there at least 4 other riders were filling out surveys and talking to the BREC representatives. I was really glad to hear that- thanks to everyone who came out and let the folks at BREC know that Baton Rouge will not be another Hammond.

As far as a completion date or any timeline, I have no idea. I've heard from a couple of different people that BREC would like to have this done in the next 18 months (but I don't know if that is official).

Anyone with more information or comments can post responses to this entry below (instead of having to use the guestbook- I hate that thing).

Sorry that this post was somewhat official sounding- next time I'll post some crazy drunken pictures or something like that...