Here's Ray himself, in a short interview about the story of how he started riding a mountain bike, cleaned up his own life, and then started building an indoor mountain bike park.
Housed in an abandoned factory in Cleveland, Ohio, the idea began in 2004, and Ray's MTB has been growing and evolving ever since. Ray describes it as a sort of a "Field of Dreams" story, referring to the 1989 movie starring Kevin Costner. Ray had the idea, started building it, kept building it, and years later sold the place to Trek, and then later built a second park in Milwaukee. That second park closed, but the original Ray's MTB is still going strong, drawing mountain bike riders, and some BMXers from around the country.
It's one man's dream, that became a community, and not scalable from a major corporate standpoint. But that doesn't matter, here's one of those rust belt factories that closed down in the 1980's or 1990's, that is now a legendary action sports iconic spot, in the unlikely city of Cleveland, Ohio. Personally, I think there's a lot to be learned by the success of Ray's MTB in the world of adaptive reuse, and finding new purposes for old buildings.
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