Southaven to add bike track/skate park at Cherry Valley

Hoping to revitalize Southaven’s Cherry Valley Park, city officials will be seeking proposals from contractors to build a new bike track/skate park at Cherry Valley Park on Stateline Road.

“The skate park will be more than double the size of the only other skate park in our history and the bike track is referenced as a “pump track” due to the current trend of using sloped and banked asphalt tracks to increase speeds with minimized pedaling,” said Mayor Darren Musselwhite in a blog post on the official city website.

“As always, we’re staying on the cutting edge of modernizing our parks with the closest tracks of this kind being as far away as Little Rock, Arkansas and eastern Tennessee.”

Musselwhite said the location for this new park is directly south of the football complex parking lot.

The estimated cost of the bike rack/skate park for design and construction is about $1 million. It will be funded by tourism tax revenue and is a start to a larger plan to renovate Cherry Valley Park.

Musselwhite hoped the project will bring more usage to a facility that has not been used as much as it used to years ago. At one time, Cherry Valley was the city’s first youth baseball and football complex.

“With population growth and movement as well as changing interests in youth sports, this park has seen less and less demand,” said Musselwhite. “This park is too special for our city to not restore it as a significant part of our comprehensive parks and recreation program.”

The mayor did say as a protection of the investment being placed there, gates will be added and the park will close at sunset, as well as camera installation and more supervisory responsibilities.