- Back in the spring, we opened Berm Park,
a public mountain bike park that this audience
and a group of sponsors funded.
It features berms, jumps, wooden features,
bike repair stations, and even an outdoor pump
at the trailhead.
And it's totally free like a public basketball court
or a playground.
Now, it is true that I use my YouTube audience
to crowdfund Berm Park but you could have all the funds
in the world and still fail at organizing a public project.
And so today I wanna share with you
some of the biggest lessons
that I learned throughout the process
and the hopes that it might help someone.
First, an update on Berm Park
and the park it's inside of, Chestnut Mountain Nature Park.
Most of the funds we raised were for the design
and construction of trails
which was done by Elevated Trail Design.
Now that the park is open daily maintenance is done
by Kevin using funds from Patreon.
He's been doing it pretty much by himself
and with the help of a few small machines.
This summer we even had some really bad storms
and he's been keeping the place running really smooth
and it's been a really efficient use of funds.
Now, patrons are not supporting the maintenance
of Berm Park indefinitely,
but they will at least through the spring
while we get everything in place.
But while we've been focused on Berm Park,
Elevated Trail Design has been 1000 feet
above Berm Park building new trails on Chestnut Mountain.
This new backcountry trailhead has already opened
to hikers and bikers
and next month a new bike trail called Lady Bird is opening
with almost two miles of downhill.
(gentle upbeat music)
Lady Bird is one of just a few trails being added
to Chestnut Mountain this year.
Some will be for hikers only, some for bikers,
and some multi-use like Turnpike Trail,
which is a lollipop that's open right now.
And while we didn't organize
or fund any of the new backcountry trails, you could argue
that Berm Park helped accelerate this project as a whole.
So, only half a year since opening Berm Park
now sits inside of a growing trail system.
In a town that benefits from its existence,
this is the best outcome we could have possibly hoped for.
But back in 2018, we were still trying to figure out
what this place was gonna be.
The day I first walked the property,
it was with Nick from the town of Canton and Hanni
from the Southern Appalachian Highlands Conservancy.
- 450 acres on a wildlife corridor is something
that you pay attention to.
You can buy one track that's really efficient
from a land conservation perspective
and protects more habitat.
And we thought, could this be a place where conservation
and recreation can really work together.
- It felt like something that, you know,
we hope would happen but lots of things to work through
in order to get to this point where we're at now.
- We're the three of us to work together on this project.
We need to understand each other's goals.
- We don't usually hold land for public parks.
We're not staffed with the resources.
So usually we have to transfer it to a public entity
because it's at a mile
from the town of Canton was the natural fit.
- In this case,
the SAHC would buy the Chestnut Mountain property
with funds from their own donors
and a $1.2 million grant from North Carolina Clean water.
We would be responsible for building the skills park.
You already know that.
And the Town of Canton would kind of be responsible
for everything else like the parking lot,
the infrastructure, and making the place a public park.
Now, it should be pretty obvious how this benefited Canton.
They were getting a park in their town
and we got awesome land to build a bike park on.
But the SAHC had conservation goals in mind.
Those aren't just their goals
but also the goals of their donors
and the terms of that $1.2 million grant that they got.
- Any use on the property would have to be consistent
with a conservation ethic.
We tried to keep an open mind
about what that experience would be.
- Chestnut Mountain is an important wildlife corridor,
It's a watershed.
But from past projects it had also been logged,
it had been partially excavated.
And so not all of the property was completely pristine.
- At this property all the top soil was removed.
It was very disturbed and it was graded.
I think this is a great example
of how you can repair things.
- By building the bike park
in the most disturbed area on the property,
we could actually make a bike park a conservation project.
- We were cautious about the mountain biking component.
We wanted to do our due diligence,
how many miles of trails would be too impactful
or what would the trails look like,
and then it was also a learning process
with the trail designer to learn style of design
that would create potentially old logging road
to trail conversions and existing issues
on the property could be repaired by putting in new trails.
- Now a project like this can only happen
when all the stakeholders are willing to be flexible.
Originally, I wanted to build Berm Park
right next to the parking lot
so people could just jump out of their cars
and start riding.
But patience prevailed and it turned out
that the other stakeholders really had our backs.
(dramatic music)
Canton was able to secure a grant
and they built a downtrail
from the park called Bear Country.
Now, anybody that's been to Berm Park
knows about Bear Country.
It's extremely fun.
It's a great way to get back down to the parking lot.
And originally that wasn't in the plans.
And so now that payment you make to get into the park,
you get it all back on a bike specific trail.
But being able to make decisions like these
before construction begins requires planning.
In this case, a master plan.
- A master plan is taking all these good ideas
and the community input and putting it through a funnel,
seeing what's right for this specific property.
- It wasn't until we brought in Elevated Trail Design
and Equinox and did the master plan
that we were really able to understand the capabilities
of the mountain.
- We got hired by the Town of Canton
to create a trail master plan and to design Berm Park,
explore all of the property on foot,
explore all of the maps, every resource we have,
and design a trail system.
- If you're trying to get several parties
or even the public on board with your crazy idea,
you would better be able to answer some questions about it.
- What's gonna be here?
How will that be maintained? What's the budget?
- We are able to partner with Equinox,
anytime we can partner with a planning firm,
we're able to make sure
that the master plan is not just about the trails,
but everything from parking,
how are people gonna get to the park.
- So If you're trying to get a bike park
or trail system built, the first thing you should focus on
is having a contractor prepare a master plan.
It costs money and it's worth it.
That's not to say you can't prepare a master plan yourself
but it better be good if you want a municipality
or land trust to take you seriously.
Now while all this was going on, I was staying pretty quiet.
It was over two years into the process
by the time I made an announcement on YouTube.
And by that time we had altered the timeline
and the overall plan several times.
So if I had gone and opened my beak sooner
and blabbed to everybody about the park,
it would've looked really bad every time we made changes
to the timeline or changes to the design
having five different versions
of the plan kind of floating around the internet
and definitely would've been pretty confusing.
But I was also keeping quiet about Berm Park
because I didn't really know
who was gonna be paying for it yet.
(dramatic music)
Now it's true that I did have tons of funds
from Patreon to get the project started,
but I kinda needed another $150,000
and I was pretty sure I could get those from sponsors.
But it turns out that sponsors won't give you money
unless you can provide proof
that something is actually happening.
So to get contractors, materials, and a start date,
I needed to sign contracts.
But to make payments on those contracts,
I needed funds and to get funds, I needed signed contracts.
Consider a Roman archway,
it's really strong if everything's in place
but you can't assemble the freaking thing
because individual blocks won't stand on their own.
So, you need to support the archway
while it's being constructed.
So, I was signing contracts guaranteeing they would be paid
before we had any sponsors on board.
It was really scary.
But this time when I approached sponsors,
they were joining a project that already had a start date,
that was already well funded.
It was happening.
And as each sponsor came on board,
the archway was able to support itself
and I wasn't standing under it.
And from there,
the rest of the process was a whole lot less scary.
It was funded.
We had a professional trail contractor building for us.
Stuff was happening every day
and all I had to do was what I was used to, making videos.
And from there, you know what happened.
Berm Park was built, grand opening was a massive success.
And since then the parking lot has been packed with cars.
People are using the place and loving it.
- Yeah, I could have a major water sewer line
breaking Canton and it could cost us $750,000,
a million dollars and total build-out
will be under that number for 18 plus miles of trails.
- So now, that Berm Park is open
and I've had some time to reflect on the entire process,
I view every public park or trail system
through a different lens.
I have a way bigger appreciation
for everything that might have gone into making it happen.
And I also view something else through a different lens
and that would be exotic cars.
Hear me out, Berm Park costed $250,000.
That's like an entry level exotic car.
And people are driving these things around everywhere.
Now some people are passionate,
they're enthusiasts, I get that.
But a lot of them just want to do something
that's impressive.
They just want to show off.
And so ask yourself this, what's more impressive,
an exotic car or a park named after you?
Not only does a park cost less than an exotic car,
not only is it more fun,
but it might even require less maintenance.
Now, there are hundreds of other tiny lessons
I learned through this process
but those are the ones that really stuck with me.
Understand and respect the goals of the other stakeholders,
get a master plan immediately as soon as possible,
whatever it costs, get a master plan.
I learned that obtaining funding is much easier
when you already have the funds.
I'm not really sure what to do with that one.
And it's way easier to build on top of an archway
than to build the archway itself.
Now, that Berm Park is built,
there's all sorts of stuff popping up around it.
- Having this project incubate,
the larger project was pretty providential and cool.
- The trails at Chestnut Mountain are being opened in phases
and the conservation easement restrictions
are kind of watching how these trails are developed
and maintained over time.
- Thank you to everybody who supported Berm Park
and thanks to all of you who watched this channel
for giving me the influence
to be able to even do things like this.
If you missed any of the videos
where we constructed Berm Park, I left a playlist below.
I hope you learn something today
and if not I hope you at least found an entertaining.
Thanks for riding with me today and I'll see you next time.
(bicycles revving)
- Oh gosh, (indistinct)