A dream come true? Nahh. NDB. Evan Moyle & myself have leased our own private indoor heated warehouse in Northeast Minneapolis, and packed it full with MN’s largest BMX ramps.
All of our ramps are designed and based off of the exact same transitions from Woodward & Lake Owen Camps, Ryan Nyquist’s “Unit” Warehouse, and AST Dew Tour ramps which came directly from the man himself, DMC/Dennis McCoy. We have 7′ quarters with huge decks 8′ wide decks for throwing you tech down or chilling out, a 10′ quarter to blast our 5.7′ box jump with tranny landing (yes we have the largest box jump in the state) also we have a another identical box lunch into a foam pit with the same foam from Woodward & Lake Owen Camps, and also removable resi landing for our box jump & 7′ quarters. Enough to keep you pumping full speed and blasting big ramps allllllll winter long.
After signing our lease, ordering & delivering lumber, tools (drills, nail guns, screw guns, circular saws, etc), waivers, agreements, paying for insurance, utilities, lawyers, etc, not to mention the endless time investment & time away from work, this has easily turned into a $15,000 project in these first 6 months. Special thanks to Glenn and Elliot, and a few others who helped with ramp construction. Hundreds of hours and many long nights have been put into this.
So what’s the deal, who gets to ride this fricken place? Basically anyone who chips in to cover rent. The skatepark business is not a profitable one, we are not running this as a public park. Evan & I both have full time jobs to help keep run this place available for everyone who is down to chip in. Our goal is to eventually break even, and down the road rent more space for a mini ramp, spine, etc after enough people are psyched on the place. After asking everyone around the Twin Cities area if they were interested in chipping in for 6 months of rent, we had about 50 people who were down to do it. Cool so now our prices can stay fairly low for each rider, however realistically we’re expecting maybe half to actually pay. Once we sign this lease, it is a HUGE commitment for Evan & I (BTW if you try to do this on your own, very few riders will give you a committed answer which makes it really difficult to plan this financially). After months of planning, and coming up with costs, we put together some prices for riders based on how many people are able to chip in. If this many people chip in it will be this price, if this many more people chip in it will be this different price, and so on. So I called Evan from CA as I was driving back to Vegas from Nasty’s Stephen Murray benefit jam & said let’s pull the trigger baby. I flew back into town, we signed the lease the next day, and had our own warehouse keys in our hands by the end of the week. Now its time to start collecting money from the large group of people that were interested, but guess what, EIGHT people actually said they could pay. Less than 1/5th of the list of people who said they were down. Sooooo realistically how can our prices stay that cheap?? Here’s the final deal for these 6 months, $600 up front payment and we give you your own key with 24/7 access to our ramps and heated indoor facility. Only those who pay are allowed to ride. You will sign our waiver & membership agreement/rules. Those who break our rules will lose their access with no refund. We have a small group of members, great for always having a perfect place to ride every single day.
We have a few younger riders around age 13 that I have done lessons with in the past who’s parents have chipped in for them. These young riders are riding and learning tricks with us daily. This is an very rare opportunity for any rider that I would have done anything for when I started riding. I used to save $1,000 of my Dairy Queen job money every year to go to Woodward Camp to ride the type of ramps that Evan & I have now made available for you to ride in the Twin Cities. As far as riding & instruction goes, and having the same ramps & foam as the camps, this is a much better bang for your buck. Any kids out there, have your parents contact me & we’ll talk about shredding our ramps together as soon as possible, we’ll get you doing frontflips & flairs into the pit like our other young shredders.