Photo: Cranx, seen here when it was under construction, is an 83,000-square-foot facility located outside of Syracuse, NY. (courtesy)

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CranX

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By Toby Hill

SYRACUSE, NY—Dale Cruce has every right to be weary, spending long hours and seven-day weeks
swinging a hammer and hauling lumber to make his dream project a reality.

But the co-owner of the new CranX Bike and Sports Park gives no hint of fatigue as he takes a break
from creating the distinctive features that, he believes, set his year-round indoor/outdoor mountain, BMX and road bike park apart from the handful of indoor bike parks in North America, such as the Ray’s MTB Indoor Parks in the U.S. and Joyride150 in Canada.

“Our berm trails—there’s nothing like them in the world. One is like an indoor downhill section full
of big berms that leads to a giant wall ride. Nobody has anything like that as far as an indoor section,” Cruce said.

CranX, which at press time was set to have a soft opening in late February, has 55,000 square feet of riding space inside a 90,000-square-foot warehouse that will also feature a lounge, party room, bike and equipment rentals, locker room, and a fit­ness room with trainers and spin classes. A three-acre outdoor area, to be built this spring, will offer riders dirt trails and jump lines as well as a road course.

Inside the warehouse, a small forest’s worth of lumber has given rise to a freeride area with drops, skinnies, suspension bridges, teeter-totters and linked stumps; jump lines as tall as 12 feet; a BMX park with plazas, half- and quarter-pipes and a foam pit; the aforementioned berm trails as well as a pump track; and an elevated, undulating cross-country mountain bike course one-sixth of a mile long with smooth planking on one side of its eight-foot width, for novice riders, and features such as bumps, logs, skinnies and root-like sections on the other.

An indoor road course will link with the outdoor area to form a half-mile loop where CranX plans to stage criteriums. “Crits are pretty popular around here but they’re difficult to set up, mostly because you need permits. With us, the permits will be set; you just organize it,” Cruce said.

It’s all the culmination of more than a decade of planning by Cruce, who got bit by the mountain bike bug in the late ’80s after the ski shop he worked at started selling off-road rigs in the summertime.

During central New York’s winters, when people were pick­ing up their skis and snowboards, Cruce wanted to keep moun­tain biking. BMXers had indoor parks to ride year-round; why not build the same for mountain bikers? he wondered.

As freeriding and downhill gained popularity in the ’90s, the idea appeared more viable to Cruce, who wrote a college report on his business plan in 1998.

In 2003 he began looking for a warehouse to build his park. Cruce sought advice from real estate attorney Seth Fischer, a customer from the ski shop. “I saw pretty quickly that he need­ed financial backing,” said Fischer, who became a 50/50 partner with Cruce.

Building out the warehouse space has cost about $500,000, they said. Some 20 different companies, plus local bike retail­ers, have shown interest in sponsorship and advertising oppor­tunities with CranX, Cruce said, but nearly all are waiting until they see the park up and running.

Cruce laid out the initial design for CranX, and the part­ners brought aboard experienced park builders Jeremy Witek, Steve St. Arnold, Ron Kimler and Amos Beury. Witek—who has built parks and features for the Red Bull Rampage, several Woodward facilities and Ray’s Milwaukee—has been instru­mental in fine-tuning Cruce’s design, Fischer said.

Even more important to getting CranX off the ground has been the outpouring of support from the rider and bicycle re­tail community, Cruce noted. “Each and every bike shop has been here volunteering their time to help build,” he said.

Those shop employees include much of the staff from The Bike Loft in nearby Manlius, New York. “He’s been working on this thing forever. It’s been his baby, it’s been his dream,” Bike Loft owner Jeremy Clay said of longtime friend Cruce. “I think it’s going to be great for cycling in central New York.”

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Syracuse, NY — Wheels are set to get into motion this weekend at CranX Bike and Sports Park in DeWitt.

The state-of-the-art recreation center is the first of its kind in the region and based on a unique concept limited to a handful of facilities in North America.

“We got our certificate of occupancy (from the town) and we will definitely be open Saturday,” said Seth Fischer, who, along with business partner Dale Cruce, created and operate CranX. “We’ve already added a lot of new stuff.”

CranX is parked in and around a 90,000-square-foot former warehouse at 6341 Thompson Road, across from the Verizon building and not far from Carrier Circle (as you’re facing the building, the entrance is on the side toward the back).

It’s designed to cater to a wide range of bike enthusiasts. It features a vast array of amenities to appeal to road bike, mountain bike and BMX bike enthusiasts.

The indoor and outdoor — three acres to be developed in the spring — park features a cross country track, freeride trails, jump trails, a road track, half pipe, foam pit and a street region. It’s sectioned into beginner, intermediate and expert areas.

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