Fifteen-year-old Cedar Park native Shane Brannen wanted a place to ride. So did 46-year-old Cedar Park resident Dimitri Nichols.
Last fall Jake Carsten procured a vital water line from the city out to the bike park behind Elizabeth Milburn Park and began work on a remodel.
However, he had to move away and the project sputtered until  Nichols, Brandon Goodman and Cullen McMorrow spurred a renewed effort to try and set a trend in what they consider a “BMX Mecca” in Austin and Central Texas.
Brannen and fellow BMX rider and Cedar Park Middle School sophomore Garrett Garst have been in the middle of it all, sometimes working on the park twice a day five times a week and taking pride in creating something special.
“For this to be a big deal means so much to me,” Brannen said. “This really is a BMX Mecca, there are tons of pros in the area and riding is huge here.”
With biking favorite Ramp Ranch in Liberty Hill all but  shut down and bikers forbidden from riding in the Cedar Park or Leander skate parks, Nichols has been a blur of activity trying to secure loads of soil through donations while trying to get the city more involved in the project.
Nichols is close to getting a donation from Ranger Excavation and is talking with the city later this week, he said.
The BMX pump track, as it’s called, plans call for three separate levels of courses to prevent riders from intimidation or attempting jumps above their level. The first stage — the beginner track — is nearly complete and the crew will start work on the intermediate track after that.
At the heart of building, and keeping, a top-tier track is having riders maintain it themselves to keep the track from breaking down or cracking.
“I hope someone sees what we’re doing out there is noteworthy for everyone to come check out,” Nichols said. “Then someone else will build a bigger and better one (in the CenTex area), and then someone else will after that, but someone has to initiate that next level so that’s what we’re doing.”
The park, which was built by the city and existed in some form since 2002, started to undergo changes when Carsten lobbied the city successfully to get a water line to the park last fall, but he had to move out of town and the project stalled.
As the three adults involved in the process all have other jobs, they have naturally taken on different aspects of the project, a boon to them all, Goodman and McMorrow said.
Getting that water line out to the park was essential to making the Milburn track into something special, they all said.
“This could turn into another Mecca spot because, A) it’s a long ways away from any trail around, and B) we have our own water,” Goodman said. “Every other trail has to carry water in five-gallon buckets and at some places it’s over a mile away.”
The trio have been thrilled that youth BMX riders in the area, and even non riders, are turning out to help move loads of dirt, wet it and stamp it out to create something they can call their own.
“There are lots of mistakes around the country with people thinking they can dump a ton of dirt and the teenagers will build the park themselves,” said McMorrow, who was architect of the Walnut Creek bike park and is architect of Milburn expansion. “My goal is to get enough dirt for free and do enough by hand to prove we know what we’re doing to get a lot more dirt in there and use a Bobcat to take it to the next level.”

Goodman, who lives across from Milburn Park, called Austin arguably the No. 1 spot in the world for BMX with places like the world-famous 9th Street park downtown, Walnut Creek park, Red Box, and the handful of major BMX companies housed in the Austin area.
The International Mountain Biking Association recently contacted Nichols and invited him to a board meeting. The Milburn group was adopted under the IMBA umbrella group of supported construction projects.
“They want to be a part of it and see it to completion,” Nichols said.
As things progress in Cedar Park, Goodman is also keeping in mind the small race park in Leander at Blockhouse Park. Furthermore, both Garst and Brannen said friends in Leander, where biking on the skate park in town was banned earlier this month, have been coming to Cedar Park to help on the track.
“If they had water I’d be digging out there, too,” Goodman said.
Nichols believes the park has become a bonding ground for kids in the area and, more importantly, they are getting out and socializing in the real world and holding each other accountable.
“It’s great interaction for the kids, and they’re getting the value of putting something into this and getting something out of it,” Nichols said.
Added Garst, “Everyone is really eager to help out. Even kids that don’t ride and just have a bike will come by and watch and then they’ll grab a shovel or wheelbarrow or broom and help.”
Cedar Park brothers Omar (11), Sami (10) and Tammer Alzer (8) can only roll over most of the hills and jumps, but that hasn’t stopped them from going to the park almost daily while bringing their two cousins from San Antonio, Norah (7) and Julia Deais (10) the past two weeks.
“We’ve been coming here a lot and I hope they make it even bigger and better,“ Omar said.
Nichols said the group needs about two more loads of dirt (they’ve been using spoils dirt left over from Cedar Park construction projects) to finish the green (beginner) track. At that point they might need a boost to help step things up further.
According to McMorrow, for the three different trail loops to be done by the end of the year, the next two things they need are “more loads of dirt and the use of a Bobcat.”
“The reality is a $5,000 commitment would get this thing polished,“ Nichols said. “But what we would really like is continued support to let us finish what we’re trying to do here.”
Though there is a master plan in place, the course is being evolved as they go to ensure it’s exactly what everyone wants.
“We’re learning to do it and we get to ride what we build,““Garst said. “People ask and want to help, and parents are so nice to us and say ‘you are doing this for us, we want to help you.’”