$2.8 million Wheaton park renovation will include county’s first paved ‘pump track’

Other improvements include new playground, walkways

May 22, 2020 1:25 p.m.

The Montgomery County Planning Board last week approved a $2.8 million renovation to Carroll Knolls Local Park in Wheaton, which includes plans for the county’s first paved “pump track.”

The asphalt pump track will be a circuit of rollers and banked turns designed to be ridden by “all wheels, ages and abilities” without pedaling or pushing, according to Planning Board Documents. Instead, momentum is generated with up-and-down body motions that propel users forward on bicycles, scooters and other wheeled devices.

Other improvements at the park include a new playground area, a multipurpose open space, a picnic shelter, new entrances and concrete path connections between amenities in the park.

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Carroll Knolls Local Park is on the former site of the Montgomery College of Art and Design, which the county’s Parks Department purchased in 2012. The park officially opened in April 2014.

In the Plyers Mill Estates Neighborhood, the 4-acre park currently has an open lawn area, 50 parking spaces and picnic tables. It is bordered by a 6-foot-tall fence on two sides.

There are narrow sidewalks along Georgia Avenue and Evans Drive, Planning Board documents say, and there are no paved pedestrian access walkways into the park.

New plans call for an open field area in the southern portion of the park with the pump track to the north. The new playground will be to the west of the pump track and the parking lot will be reduced to 25 spaces. The playground will cost about $356,000.

The pump track will have signs indicating that traffic will travel one-way. It will be “the park’s main active recreational amenity” and is projected to cost about $280,000, according to Planning Board documents.

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A natural surface trail will run through a wooded area along the western edge of the property to provide a new pedestrian path to access the park.

The project is expected to cost $2.8 million and about $61,000 annually to maintain. The project must receive approval from the Montgomery County Council before construction can begin.

Caitlynn Peetz can be reached at caitlynn.peetz@moco360.media

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