Civil engineering seniors design bike park proposal for capstone project

The civil engineering program at Colorado State University concludes with students spending months crafting a large-scale engineering project to demonstrate their knowledge over years of study. For several current civil engineering seniors, that project has taken the form of a bike park.

The senior capstone design, titled Bay Farm Bike Park, is an envisioned bike park near CSU. The proposal lays out a plan to turn the area just south of CSU’s main campus into a bike park, without heavily modifying the land.

“I thought it sounded fun,” said Dylan Young, civil engineering student and capstone project team member. “That’s why I had it on the top of my list for the choices.”

The team is made up of six civil engineering seniors who have been working on the capstone project since September 2025. The proposed bike park would focus on racing and tracks, which would set it apart from a park focused on mountain biking and trails, such as the proposed bike park that used to be home to Hughes Stadium.

“The goal was to make a park that was the most accessible for as many people as possible, like a community space,” said Drew Stover, civil engineering student and capstone project team leader. “We (asked), ‘How do we design this bike park that’s both engaging for the whole community, yet different from something like Hughes being made in the next couple years?’ We needed to find a way to make something unique.”

The project includes space for biking, which will use paved trails, mountain bike trails and cyclocross obstacles. One of the most prominent features of the plan is a velodrome, which would be Fort Collins’ first. The velodrome would not only be used as a cycling arena for the park but would also serve as a water retention basin if a major flooding event ever happened.

“It’s going well in the sense that, like, we know what we need to do,” Stover said. “It’s just actually, like, sitting down and putting it on paper.”

Keeping the terrain intact is a challenge in designing the park. A 100-year floodplain encompasses the area the bike park is proposed to be built upon. The project cannot alter the floodplain, nor can the plan use any objects that could potentially be picked up by floodwater. The land has remained undeveloped since the 1997 Spring Creek flood, which left the area heavily damaged.

In order to get needed information to build, the team consulted experts in floodplain utilities, landscape architecture and trail building. Advisers Cameron Phillips and Nate Vander Broek, both active transportation professionals, said they found additional experts for the students to consult and oversee the status of the project.

“I’m just (here) to make sure that they meet timelines and that they’re prepared to present (the project) in a few months,” Phillips said. “This is their culminating project here at CSU. I want to make sure it’s reasonable in what they’re doing and that they have a reasonable budget.”

The team presented the project at the Fort Collins Transportation Projects Fair Feb. 6.

“They had close to 60 interactions (at the fair),” Phillips said. “The team was able to take feedback from people in the community who go out and view the projects from the outside.”

It is important to remember that the plan to build a bike park is a proposal, not a project intended to be realized. Still, the plan sets the framework for a serious plan to start building a bike park upon Bay Farm, if it ever happens in the future.

“When we present to the school, or wherever, they will have a really good idea of what exactly we want to put in, how much it roughly costs and things like that,” Stover said. “They will know what they can make with whatever budget they decide to allocate toward it.”

For Phillips, the capstone project exemplifies skills the seniors picked over their years studying civil engineering at CSU and goes beyond a school project; it offers a trial to prepare civil engineering students for their professional careers.

“We want the students to be successful in their presentation,” Phillips said. “We want to be good advisers for them and good resources for them to be successful as they move out into the world after CSU.”