Custom bike rack in Laramie Wyo. designed by artist Meg Thompson (Source: Laramie Main Street Alliance
It's a very simple formula for towns to attract business and add a little zest to the landscape - install artistic custom bike racks.
With today's advances in bicycle parking manufacturing, more and more municipalities and downtown development associations are discovering that they can easily feature a bunch of artistic bike racks on their sidewalks.
This immediately creates a buzz that brings in shoppers and creates a newfound sense of pride from residents.
The manufacturing of bike racks has made incredible advances in the past few decades. Rather than ordering a plain old grid-style bike rack, towns can now liven up their streets with butterflies, flowers, dinosaurs, fish, rabbits, mountain ranges, you name it.
In essence, an artsy outdoor bike rack can literally be created for whatever image you can imagine.
Think of the many benefits:
- Instant Street Art - years ago, local towns might order a giant sculpture to be placed in the town square as an artistic project. That's a huge undertaking. Those things are massive. Very expensive. Probably take a committee just about forever to make this endeavor a reality.
However, with custom bike racks a town can sit down and order a bunch of artistic bicycle parking racks in no time. If the town's official flower is a sunflower, order one of them. Is it a mountain town? Order a silhouette of a mountain range. Beach town? Order a metal bike rack shaped like the sun.
Bike parking racks made with sturdy metal tubes can now be shaped into any configuration. Coffee cups. Dinosaurs. Beer mugs. Flowers. Even bicycles.
For more detailed artistic bike racks, laser-cutting technology can carve any image precisely into a metal plate. That's also perfect for adding logos or a promotional message.
This is what officials from Walton County in the Florida Panhandle did when they added some 200 custom logo bike racks to their southern coastal area. Their bike rack supplier (The Park Catalog) burned the town's wave and dune logo into the metal plate along with a message, "Visit South Walton." The purpose of adding the slogan was to reinforce the extensive branding promoted by the South Walton Tourist Development Council (see South Walton site here.)
South Walton custom bike rac
The other great benefit of today's bike rack technology is that there are a tremendous number of colors available - from brilliant greens to bright yellows. Do you have a dreary, gray sidewalk downtown? Throw some vibrantly colored custom bike racks on the concrete and instantly brighten up the surroundings. You can even add your own preferred custom colors or use multiple colors. The possibilities are endless.
- Create an Identity - let's face it. Many towns look alike. They got their downtown and maybe even a town square or park. Brick buildings, sidewalks, glass storefronts, etc.
How are you going to separate the uniqueness of your municipality from thousands of others? How are you going to impress visitors? How are you going to attract shoppers to your retail district instead of somewhere else? How are you going to get young people to hang out at your restaurants and bars?
Try bike parking racks. It's a very simple formula. Pick some artistic images that you want your town to be associated with. Is it a fishing area? Add some silhouettes of fish leaping. Ski town? Mountains and skiers. Beach town? Turtles and sunbeams. As we said, use these sidewalk bike racks to create a unique identity that people will remember and get them talking.
Take the Laramie Main Street Alliance in Wyoming for example. They hired local artist Meg Thompson to create a series of bike racks depicting scenes around the town - mountains, buffalo, antelope, elk, deer, etc.
Bazinga - those custom bike racks immediately became the talk of the region. Generated a ton of free publicity.
"It's been surprising. And it's all been very positive," said Trey Sherwood, executive director of the Laramie Main Street Alliance. "People call us all the time asking us how they can do that in their town."
She says their bike parking rack project is not even near completion. They added 40 outdoor bike racks and still plan to eventually install a total of 200 in high traffic areas.
One major payoff - she has heard from merchants that say they now see customers more frequently as there are more places to park their bikes downtown.
"The business community has been very supportive," she said. "We have merchants asking us, 'When do I get a bike rack in front of my business?'"
- Custom Bike Racks Solve Parking Issues - every downtown has parking problems. This can create an atmosphere best summed up by the famous mangler of the English language Yoga Berra. He once said he didn't frequent a popular restaurant because "nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded." Same goes with downtown parking. Too hard to find.
Bicyclist bike rac
With millions more Americans now preferring to bicycle than drive, adding custom bike racks to your downtown area serves a dual function- it creates artistic excitement and it gives people a place to park their bikes.
Many people would rather pedal a two-wheel vehicle downtown and park it at a convenient bike rack in front of their destination. It certainly beats steering a massive four-wheeled chunk of metal around town desperately looking for a parking space.
Street bike racks solve that problem. Just take one parking space and create a type of "bike corral." You can add a dozen bicycles to that same spot which means a heck of a lot more customers.
Downtown merchant associations would be smart to deploy this strategy. Many towns such as Pittsburgh, PA and Lynchburg, VA are doing this with their own artistic bike racks.
- Small Investment- say you want to do something arts-related for your town. Spice things up. So you form a committee and start exploring possibilities. Murals there. A giant statue here. Refurbish the local museum, etc. You come up with a bunch of great ideas. And then you submit them for bids.
Whoa. What happened? All of a sudden those projects became very, very expensive. Now you have town council members wondering if the town can afford it. Then you have your town critics questioning whether this is a good way to spend public money.
With custom bike racks, you don't really have that concern. The price to add these pieces of street art to a downtown area is a bargain compared to other municipal projects. Plus, you can start slowly and then add more as you go. You don't have to sink a massive amount of money into this project.
Another possibility is to encourage merchants and restaurant to be involved. Sure, a coffee shop would love to have a coffee-shaped bike rack positioned in front of their location. Same goes with a tavern. Or a pizza place. Ask them to share in the price of a custom commercial bike racks.
Moose bike rack designed by Meg Thompson (Source: Laramie Main Street Alliance)
Show them the research. A study conducted in Portland, Ore., found that bicycling consumers tend to visit businesses more often than people who drive by car. Over the course of a month, that bicyclist also tends to spend more overall per month than a motorist.
It's a proven formula. Add a bike parking rack in front of your business, your business will be noticed more by customers.
- Create Excitement in New Places - here's another strategy to consider. Say your downtown is doing great. Attracts plenty of people. Can't attract any more. However, there's another part of town you want to expand and start promoting. Perhaps that section of town is a bit worn down. Or maybe you are adding a bunch of art studios and galleries and want to support local artists.
What quicker and better way to attract attention than to add street art to the sidewalk in the form of artistic bike racks? Heck, you can even have local artists come up with the ideas like Laramie did. Or conduct a bike rack theme contest in town.
All of this activity is sure to attract the attention of the media who are always looking for an interesting story.
Get your visitor's center involved too. Let them get the word out to surrounding towns that there is something very interesting going on in your town that people just have to see.
The benefit of adding custom bike racks with an artistic flair is best summed up in a statement by Marjette Upshur, the Lynchburg, VA, director of economic development. She said that public sidewalk art "gives a city personality."
"An arts-oriented, bike-friendly city creates a vibrant community with positive effects on business development and social and physical connectivity."
Municipal projects tend to be complicated, time-consuming and costly. That's just the way it is.
But here is that rare civic project that is inexpensive and easy. Officials would be smart to add custom bike racks to their agenda. It's one small item that can immediately have a major, visual and economic impact on a town.
You can see more of Meg Thompson's work here.
Note: There was an omission in the previous blog, and the artist Meg Thompson who designed the racks and organized the local manufacturing of the racks for Laramie Main Street Alliance may be reached at www.megthompsonart.com.