If you ride, walk, or just squint up at the hills behind Glendora Avenue, you already know the trails. Kids have been building jumps and cutting lines into the dirt above the South Hills for years, in the scrubby folds locals call Honda Hills. The city has spent almost as long trying to turn that unofficial tradition into an actual bike park, and almost as long missing its own deadlines to do it.
The project has a name now, South Hills Bike Park, a design firm, a rough budget, and a federal grant attached to it. What it does not have, as of this month, is a shovel in the ground. The most recent paper trail explains why this delay is different from the ones before it.
What the City Is Actually Proposing
The plan calls for a bike park core near the southwest end of the 320-acre South Hills project site, just off Glendora Avenue. Design documents from Avid Trails, the firm the city hired to draw it up, describe three jump lines split by skill level, two pump tracks, a climbing trail, and a new multi-use connector loop meant to tie the built park into the wider trail network. The city's own environmental filings map out a maze of named trails inside the project boundary, from the Alosta Canyon Trail to the Elderberry Loop, and city staff have said some existing routes may be redesignated for downhill-only bike use once construction wraps. A viewing point known as Scout Point Observation Circle stays put as a lookout over the city and the San Gabriel foothills.
The city also wants to regrade the access road off Glendora Avenue and add a 24-space parking lot, a restroom, and a bike fix-it stand. None of that is speculative. It is written into the project's own environmental review documents.
The part that is speculative, and has been for three years now, is when any of it gets built.
The Timeline the City Itself Filed
Pull the public record together and a pattern shows up that no single meeting or press release makes obvious on its own.
| Date | What the city said or filed |
|---|---|
| May 2023 | City Council backs the grant application; Avid Trails finishes the conceptual design |
| May 2024 | Avid Trails completes the schematic design |
| January 2025 | Staff tell the Community Services Commission that design is 90 percent done, bids are expected by May, and construction should start that September |
| July 2025 | The Water Commission hears an update on the same bike path and pump track plans, with the September target still on the calendar |
| December 3, 2025 | The city files a Notice of Intent to adopt a Mitigated Negative Declaration |
| July 1, 2026 | The city files a Notice of Intent to adopt a recirculated Mitigated Negative Declaration |
That last line is the one worth reading twice. A recirculated Mitigated Negative Declaration is not the same thing as a routine delay. It means the environmental document the city put out for public comment in December 2025 has to go back through review again before the project can move forward, essentially restarting the public comment clock on the same piece of paperwork. City staff had told the Community Services Commission back in January 2025 that construction was on track for that September. The city's own Ask Glendora portal later revised the estimate to "early 2026." Neither held. The July 2026 filing is the clearest evidence yet that this project is not simply running late. It hit something in the review process substantial enough to require redoing a step most projects only do once.
Why the Process Is Taking This Long
Some of the friction is visible in the record. The city hired Duke Cultural Resources Management to prepare Section 106 historic preservation documentation, which went to the State Historic Preservation Office for review, and at least one tribal representative asked to monitor the site during ground disturbance under the state's AB 52 consultation requirements. Alta Planning and Design handled preliminary engineering, and a geotechnical report from IMEG Corporation found the site developable as proposed. PlaceWorks was brought on for the CEQA review itself, a process staff described as typically taking eight to ten months on its own.
None of that is unusual for a public trail project on a hillside with existing habitat and cultural resource questions. What is unusual is how much money has already gone into planning before any dirt has moved. By January 2025, the city had already spent just over $532,000 on design and environmental studies for a project whose construction was then estimated at roughly $1.5 million, out of a total project cost pegged at $2 million. Half of that is supposed to come from a $1 million National Park Service Land and Water Conservation Fund grant, contingent on the city clearing exactly the kind of federal and state review steps that are still in progress.
At an August 27, 2024 City Council meeting, Councilmember Karen K. Davis put the community mood plainly:
"If you could build it tomorrow, that would be great."
Today is August 27, 2026. That comment is exactly two years old, and the project it was about still does not have a construction date.
What Happens to the Trails in the Meantime
Here is the part that matters most if you already ride up there. The unofficial version of this park, the one kids built themselves out of dirt mounds and scrap lumber, was not left alone while the city moved toward an official design. According to Avid Trails' own project description, the city had already stripped out many of the rogue features in the South Hills Wilderness Area before commissioning a professional design to replace them. That means some of the jumps and lines riders used for years are already gone, while their formal replacements sit behind a recirculated environmental document with no construction date attached.
It is a strange middle period for anyone who treats the South Hills as their regular loop. The city's broader trail network, roughly 19 miles across 32 trails within city limits according to Glendora's own parks department, is still there and still open outside the project boundary. But the specific stretch this plan covers, including named routes like the Alosta Canyon Trail and the South Hills Backbone Trail, is caught between what used to exist informally and what has not yet been built formally.
The Detail That Changes Who This Park Is For
One more piece of context is easy to miss if you are only tracking the bike park itself. The project site sits about a half mile from Glendora's new Metro A Line station, which began passenger service on September 19, 2025. That timing was not incidental to the original planning. When Glendora's management analyst first described the project to Streetsblog LA in 2024, the station's opening was already part of the pitch, positioning the bike park as reachable by transit in a way most Southern California mountain bike facilities are not.
That detail matters for anyone thinking about the South Hills as a long-term neighborhood asset rather than a weekend errand. A bike park a short ride from a light rail stop draws a different kind of visitor than one you can only reach by car, and it is one more thread connecting the Village's recent growth, new restaurants, a monthly night market at the station, an expanding transit line, to the foothill neighborhoods above it.
Where to Watch This Yourself
If you want to track the recirculated review without waiting for the next news cycle, the city's own project notice page is the most direct source, and Community Services Commission meetings are where staff give the plainest updates on bid timelines and grant status. Based on the pattern so far, treat any construction date the city announces as the start of the next review cycle, not a promise.
For now, the South Hills keep doing what they have always done: hosting riders who built something themselves while the official version works its way through one more round of paperwork.
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