What would you do if, after spending three years petitioning the local government to find a place in any of its parks or open spaces for mountain bike trails, you were unequivocally shut down?
Most people would either give up or take matters into their own hands by building rogue trails.
But not Chris and Rene Creed.
By any measure, Chris and Rene are not your average couple. The pair of serial entrepreneurs is extremely driven. When I spoke with Chris, he attributed much of the energy to his wife Rene (who was too busy at a “wine tasting meeting” to make the interview — fair play!). “Honestly, it’s my wife,” said Creed. “She’s the driving force behind this. She just really excels under pressure. And she loves chaos.”
And Rene doesn’t seem to take “no” for an answer. “When we met 25 years ago in February, [the night we met] she said we were going to get married and have seven kids. And I was like, ‘Wow, you’re kind of crazy. But let’s see what happens.’ I like to joke that that’s the only time she’s ever been wrong because we had eight, not seven.”
Serial entrepreneurs will do entrepreneur things
Despite having a house full of offspring, the Creeds bought and ran the successful Gateway Harley Davidson dealership in St. Louis for eight years before selling it. During that time, they started the Gateway Devo Cycling team, which was one of the premier under-25 amateur road cycling development teams in the country. The most famous cyclist to come through the program was Sepp Kuss, currently the most dominant American road cyclist on the world circuit.
After selling the dealership, the Creeds dabbled in several different projects, including Rene running a cycling camp for kids with Down syndrome under the age of seven. The Creeds then got more involved in youth cycling programs by founding a nonprofit, Living Life on 2 Wheels. At the same time, their programs moved more into the world of mountain biking.
“All of a sudden, this nonprofit bike work started really taking off, teaching all these kids to ride bikes,” said Creed. “We’re trying to give them a place to go ride properly, get their families out. And there was no bicycle shop in town, and like, ‘Well, we should probably open a bike shop.’ We wanted to make it different, and so we wanted to put food in it.”
The Creeds started a combination bike shop and pizza restaurant named Pedal’n Pi in Crystal City, and the restaurant quickly took off. It took a while for the Creeds to get the hang of properly stocking a bike shop, but through the process of starting the shop, they realized that the most significant barrier to riding for both their customers and the kids they served: there weren’t any local mountain bike trails.
Crystal City is located right next door to the town of Festus, and neither community has MTB trails. While locals could drive 45 minutes to some great trails in nearby St. Louis, there was nothing in their hometown.
Bentonville is inspiring even more MTB trail development
The Creeds’ minds were absolutely blown after a 2018 trip to IMBA’s Trail Lab seminar in Bentonville, AR. “We had no clue what Bentonville was,” said Creed. “And as you know, when you roll into Bentonville, you just see bikes everywhere. I’m used to going to bicycle races and seeing bicycle racers, but you pull in this town, and you just have people riding safely everywhere, and you have families, and the kids, and it was just incredible.”
The Creeds decided they needed to get some mountain bike trails built in their hometown ASAP, so they began working with local governments to find a place in any park or piece of publicly owned land for trails. They began attending all the city council meetings and park board meetings. “We raised some money and had a feasibility study done [by IMBA] for all of our parks,” said Creed. To make a long story short, despite three years of advocacy, the Creeds couldn’t get enough traction to get trails approved on any parcel of public land.
So they decided to take matters into their own hands.
The vision for Plattin Peaks Trails is born
Chris and Rene decided to purchase an 820-acre wooded parcel from Rene’s father to build a trail system and bike park for their local community. But despite being privately owned, the road ahead still proved daunting.
The Creeds ended up facing many more regulatory hurdles than anticipated. “We thought that we could just raise money and go find a trail builder and start building trails and invite people out,” said Creed. “But unfortunately, you have to actually come up with a master plan. You got to go submit it to planning and zoning, because our property was zoned large-lot residential and agricultural, so we [had to] check every zoning box that the county has because of everything we intend to bring out to the property.”
For this process, they needed to create a master plan. At first, they were quoted $75,000 for the project, but after explaining their plans and their nonprofit status, Gabe Presley from DTLS Landscape Architecture created the master plan for free.
The number of hoops they had to jump through was myriad, but on December 12, 2024, the Plattin Peaks Trails passed a critical milestone: the Jefferson County Planning and Zoning Commission voted unanimously to approve the rezoning request and the development plan for the property. The Plattin Peaks Trails were officially greenlighted!
What will the trail system be like?
The vision for the Plattin Peaks Trails is truly inspiring. Creed said they have space on the property for around 30 miles of singletrack trails, with a total of 400 feet of vertical drop from the high point to the low point. Similar to most comprehensive master plans, they plan to offer “something for everyone,” from hybrid bikes on crushed gravel trails up to gnarly downhill runs.
Even though the property is still closed to the public, the first trails have already been built. Zac Milner of Stray Trails has constructed a one-mile green flow trail and a creekside connector trail, and he’s currently working on a blue flow trail, too. Next, they plan to build a black diamond downhill trail with a 6-foot drop so they can offer trails spanning the entire difficulty spectrum.
While the first trails to be constructed are flow trails, Nomad Trail Design currently has a bid in for 13 miles of classic singletrack trails that will wind through the valley and up the property’s two ridges.
Further down the road, the plan calls for a skills/jump park to be built in the valley and a hardpack trail circling the property for casual riders on hybrid bikes.
The trails are free to ride, but commercial ventures are coming, too
Despite being a privately owned property, Creed was quick to note that the trails will be free to ride. While this aligns with their mission to provide riding opportunities for the community, under Missouri law, it also absolves them of liability as long as the trails are well-signed.
However, as we’ve seen, you can’t keep entrepreneurs from doing entrepreneur things. Their master plan calls for an events center, catering facility, and amphitheater on the property. In addition, they plan to offer several lodging options, including tent camping platforms (similar to those at Coler in Bentonville), up to 100 RV campsites, and small cabins.
In the long term, the Creeds even envision moving Pedal’n Pi out to the property or starting a second location. They hope to build a wedding venue and event space, and they might even dig an artificial lake.
Timeline for the build-out and trails opening to the public
The master plan is big, and building out everything on the plan would take years… if it even happens at all. “The county said — no matter whether you do it or not — if you want to do it at some point in your lifetime, you need to draw it in here so you don’t have to come back to us and say, ‘Hey, can we add 25 more spots?’ Because it’ll be a big nightmare,” said Creed.
While some of the most ambitious developments will require substantial fundraising, the first mountain bike trails are already completed, and more are under construction. Once the blue trail is done and the parking lot is built, they’ll be able to open the trails to the public. While Creed was hesitant to give a date for opening, when pressed, he said, “I’m going to say April 1 is what I’m going to shoot for.”
“I’m always hesitant to give target dates, because I did that with the shop here when we moved in here in January and started rehabbing it, redoing it, and meeting everybody. I said, ‘we’ll be open in March,’ and we didn’t get open ’till August,” Creed continued. “So, I’m super leery of that, but I think since Zac already got the majority of the work done, and he did that by himself, and he’ll have a crew this time when he comes down, so it’ll be quicker. I’d say by April 1. That’s our target.”
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