Snowboarding

Urban Terrain Parks: A Viable Business Idea?

Ever since I blogged about Denver’s temporary urban terrain park, I’ve been thinking about the idea and its feasibility in other cities. Large, flat cities like Toronto still have large skier and snowboarder populations. Many skiers and snowboarders, particularly the younger ones, have to head out on road trips to local mountains a couple of hours away. And what do many of these folks do when they get there? Why, hit the terrain park. Freeriding is not the only thing that interests them, particularly when the runs at non-apline ski areas in places like Ontario aren’t particularly long.

Now, would something like this work in Toronto? I believe there is certainly the market to support it. I would venture to guess that a significant portion of the 700,000 yearly winter visitors to Bue Mountain, for example, are from Toronto. And who knows how many folks simply can’t get to Blue because of the two-hour trek required?

But in Toronto, there are several major hurdles. The biggest one, I think, is space. My guesstimate would be that an urban terrain park would require at least a couple hundred feet of vertical to cram in a few rails, jumps and boxes. And because space is scarce within the city limits, obtaining land like this is probably next to impossible. One potential solution to this problem would simply be for the local ski hills to wake up to the popularity of terrain parks and try installing one in an existing facility.

Another big problem is the weather. It’s simply impossible to start making snow consistently before the end of November, and spring is usually in full effect around March break. This makes for a pretty short season on very valuable land, unless some usage could be derived from this land over the summer.

But what about other large cities with colder climates and large target markets? I think there are several Canadian cities, including Edmonton, Saskatoon, Regina and most of the east coast, which might qualify. Surely there are some south of the border as well.

Indoor hills in the UK have proven popular (and at least close to profitable, I assume), buoyed by the popularity of their terrain parks. Surely there are some cities in North America where this model could work.

© 2006 HighlyObsessed.com | The Snowboarding and Cycling Blog