Off-road bikers weigh options after closure of park
Public open house attendees make case for access to closed off recreational area
Windsor’s off-road bicycling community, runners and nature lovers are looking to find their way back into Black Oak Heritage Park after the city blocked public access to the popular west-end nature area.
Dozens of people — many opposed to the decision to fence off the park — attended a second public open house Thursday night at the Roseville Golf and Curling Club to share their opinions with city staff.
“This is fantastic, we’re getting a lot of feedback,” Jan Wilson, the city’s executive director of parks, said as several people waited for an opportunity to speak with her.
The city shut down Black Oak in 2015 to accommodate construction for the Herb Gray Parkway, but users of the park north of Ojibway Parkway found other ways in.
The city erected new fencing in December to prevent any more access.
The city said it was doing so “to ensure the safety of residents and the natural environment.”
Users of the park had built their own trails and jumps in recent years.
Mountain biking enthusiast Andy Jenner said he understands concerns about the ecosystem in Black Oak, but that shouldn’t preclude its use for healthy activities.
“I can give them places all over Ontario that there are sensitive areas and cycling and walking that doesn’t hurt the environment,” said Jenner.
He said it’s strange that various levels of government are trying to promote active, healthy living while the city is taking away this opportunity.
“I do agree with some of the stuff they are saying but I think we could work around those, put a trail back in,” said Jenner.
He said a trail being proposed by the city would take three minutes to ride and would not maintain cyclists’ interest.
Jenner said that without cyclists in the park keeping the deer population on the move, the park and its plant life would be in jeopardy anyway.
“If we don’t ride in there, we won’t keep the deer moving around, and the deer will eat it all up,” said Jenner.
“That population is going to tear everything down to the roots, and we won’t have nothing. There’s a balance here and we’ve got to find that balance.”
Bob Grondin, a runner and cyclist who used the park for both, said there hasn’t been a serious accident in the park.
“Nobody that I know would ride a mountain bike without a helmet,” said Grondin.
Lindsay Cole, who has created the group Friends of Black Oaks which now boasts more than 1,000 members, pointed out the irony that the photo on the front page of the 2018 Windsor Yellow Pages phone book is of a mountain biker.
Wilson said after Thursday night’s input is reviewed it will still be a few months before any proposals are put before city council.
“We also want to do some research,” said Wilson.
“There’s organizations that actually have worked with municipalities who design off-road bike facilities, so we want to talk to them. We also want to talk to other municipalities who have created off-road cycling facilities as well.
“We want to do it with all that research and produce options for council based on the feedback as well as the research we’ve done and bring that to council.”
If we don’t ride in there, we won’t keep the deer moving around, and the deer will eat (the plant life) all up.