Plans for a new bike skills park in the Ashburton Domain are progressing, with a charitable trust formed to seek funding to build the facility.

A working group consisting of Councillors, Council staff, Sport Canterbury and Safer Mid Canterbury staff, and representatives from local service clubs has been meeting for the past 12 months to plan the project.

Spokesperson Deputy Mayor Liz McMillan said a concept plan had been drawn up and will be finetuned over the next two months.

“Funding the bike skills park is the next phase and our charitable trust will be seeking grants from organisations like the Lion Foundation and Lotteries.

“Once we have a final design, we’ll be working through the costs with a quantity surveyor so we can provide plenty of accurate information to those funding providers.”

The bike skills park is forecast to cost about half a million dollars, with construction not funded by ratepayers.

Council has recently granted resource consent for the project, needed because developing the park would result in an increase in the impermeable surfaces at the domain.

Ms McMillan said the park was an important facility to teach children and newcomers the bike skills they needed when moving around town, in particular the many schoolchildren who cross the main highway and railway crossing twice a day to go to school.

“It will have traffic lights and a railway crossing, as well as give ways and stop signs, a roundabout and pedestrian crossing. There’ll be most things that cyclists will encounter in the Ashburton district.”

Once funds are secured, the project will be let to a contractor rather than have the work done by service clubs – that is because of the health and safety complexities of undertaking construction in the domain, which is a public space.