Let’s All Get Pumped at Butler Shores, With Public Workout Equipment on Deck

Image: Trekfit

Despite the pandemic currently tearing apart our ability to conduct polite society, in regular times we’ve found a lot of downtown Austin dwellers consider the city itself their gym — the Hike-and-Bike Trail, exercise classes at various city facilities, and outdoor workout equipment at some of our parks. But there’s always room for more where that came from, if only because it reminds us of the possibility that things may someday return to relatively normal around here — so let’s help the Trail Foundation pick some new equipment for a public exercise facility at Butler Shores, shall we?

Image: The Trail Foundation / PARD / Oro Design Group

The Foundation, along with Austin’s Parks and Recreation Department, has a cool $500,000 carved out for new exercise equipment to replace the fairly depressing set of chin-up bars and some other scrap metal currently hanging out at Butler Shores, the trail-adjacent area of parkland following West Riverside Drive immediately west of South Lamar Boulevard, just north of the Zach Theatre and PARD’s own headquarters — a site that will hopefully someday host a new location for the Dougherty Arts Center, and now some new exercise equipment to boot! Let’s get a load of the site plan:

Click for a larger view. Image: The Trail Foundation / PARD / Oro Design Group

What you see above is the plan for landscape and hardscape improvements to the workout site itself, which will straddle this section of the trail and create an area suitable for exercise. The community engagement part of this process will determine the type of equipment we eventually smack down at the big “Fitness Equipment Zone” labeled in the plan, and for that we’ve got two wildly different options.

The enhancement proposes:

• Exercise equipment with a well-rounded variety of workouts. Equipment is designed for ages 13+
• Visual guides showing intended exercises for each equipment piece w/ a scannable link for more info
• Natural hardscape materials
• Native plants and shade trees
• Engineered Wood Fiber surfacing
• Concrete ribbon curb separate the trail from the fitness zone
• Limestone block seat wall
• New drinking fountain, bike racks, trash and recycling receptacles

— The Trail Foundation, Exercise Equipment Project Elements

Equipment Option 1: Trekfit

Click for a larger view. Image: The Trail Foundation / PARD / Oro Design Group

The first option would install an assortment of equipment by Quebecois outdoor fitness manufacturer Trekfit — a bench, various sets of bars, and at its center a “Bamboo Jungle” seemingly inspired by the wire fu fight scenes from assorted wuxia films or like, Batman’s ninja training. Here’s a video of that setup in action:

This whole thing looks exhausting, which I guess is the point. That bamboo jungle setup is also very visually appealing, which might encourage people to use it.

Equipment Option 2: Kompan

Click for a larger view. Image: The Trail Foundation / PARD / Oro Design Group

Our second option arrives from Kompan, a playground equipment manufacturer originally out of Denmark but sporting a U.S. headquarters right here in Austin. It’s a more traditional set of workout equipment, with more moving parts than the bars and bamboo setup in the first option — rings, kettlebells fixed on vertical tracks, and an “arm bike” using similar principles as the stationary bike for an upper body workout. Here’s a look at some of that equipment in action:

Both the Trekfit and Kompan equipment options include mobile apps — and both setups meet the five objectives identified by PARD and the Trail Foundation as key elements of a “well-rounded” exercise program, explained in the slide below:

Click for a larger view. Image: The Trail Foundation / PARD / Oro Design Group

You’ve got until September to pick your favorite of the two equipment options, and we’re not going to tell you how to vote here. The Trekfit setup from the first option is a lot more visually appealing than the second option’s Kompan equipment, which also has a lot of moving parts and seems more likely to wear out — but all those moving parts might also provide a more well-rounded workout, with a lower barrier to entry and what seems like increased accessibility for wheelchair users. Either way, here’s the survey in English and Spanish, to be completed at your leisure before next month.

As part of the continual goal of trail improvement for The Trail Foundation,the Butler Shores exercise equipment enhancement seeks to introduce more variety of exercise and fitness equipment, allowing for conditioning of multiple muscle groups and a range of abilities. This enhancement also seeks to bring more awareness of this public amenity in this location. Finally, the project also intends to integrate supplemental areas for rest, including an updated drinking fountain and new trees to shade users during their use of the equipment.

— The Trail Foundation, Exercise Equipment Project Goals

The project is scheduled for completion by 2022, hopefully far enough away for the present situation to be in the rearview — and while current park closures keep the existing equipment at this site beyond our reach, exercise is a good way to keep the psychological effects of social distancing at bay. We hate it, but we love it.

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