If Money Were No Object
Per what I have put forth in my book, “NBG Blueprint - Interconnecting America with a Network of Coast to Coast Bicycle Villages”, if someone were to hand me a blank check to actualize the new economy that will result when all 19 of our other Anchor Cities have an Indianapolis-like Downtown Greenway, this is how the money would be spent.
In year one we will establish an office that will house the efforts of 10 people in Indianapolis. Here my own efforts will be supported by a two-person staff. They will help me contract with national Public Relations and Landscape Developer Firms. They will also help me fill these positions -
Virtual Tour Directors | Points of Interest (POI) cartographer(s) | Anchor City Directors | POI Sales Dir & Staff | Membership Director
Our Virtual Tour Director will hire two to three NBG Scouts per city (19). A 9-month position, their first three months will be on the road research of the city in question. They will work with local cyclists to determine all the locations in our Anchor City downtowns where bike riders eat, sleep, shop, play and in other ways recreate. Over the winter, they will work with our cartographer to get their results into an online Point of Interest map. It will be this map, that we are also calling a Virtual Tour. that our Point of Interest sales reps can begin selling embellished Point of Interest placements on.
Once our route is identified, we will request bids from Landscape Developers and give them one year to draw up Requests For Proposal (RFP - for this application, these will take the form of three dimensional computer renderings and/or physical models that reflect the enhancements and upgrades they foresee) that we can then place before the public. Through the public meetings that our PR Firm will organize, the public and local history societies will also suggest the history and sights to see in these areas. In devising a bike route that gets this all linked up, our Landscape Developer will work with our PR Firm and Anchor City Director to do outreach with city officials and other vested interests. In route form only, here is the general idea for the Virtual Tour we did for Reno, Nevada.
Here a few words about Landscape Developer firms are important. Landscape Developers specialize in designing outdoor environments, especially harmonizing parks or gardens with buildings and roads. It was largely the work of Boston based Sasaki, for example, that reinvented downtown Indianapolis as they made the only Downtown Greenway in the world, the 10+ mile Indianapolis Cultural Trail, a reality.
While all of this is taking place, the 20 NBG Anchor City Directors we select will hire the other directorships noted above. As they solicit, study, screen and interview applicants, they will also work to get the National Bicycle Greenway mission built into the fabric of the local business community. They will do this through the Chambers of Commerce and the Convention and Visitors Bureaus for each of them. In these professional organizations they will be very active and where time and resources allow they will also participate in service clubs such as the Lions, Rotary, Optimist, and Kiwanis, etc.
Along with getting the Landscape Developer ball rolling and hiring NBG Anchor City Directors, one of our first orders of business, will be to contract with a top tier national Public Relations Firm. As part of such an agreement, we will require the PR Firms to establish satellite offices in each of our 20 Anchor Cities. The PR people will saturate the local media with the virtue of bicycling and our plan to make each of these cities a part of the bikeway that will connect the coasts. They will deliberate upon the benefits that will come from each of these cities having a Downtown Greenway of their own -
Instigates bike tourism | Boosts local economy with jobs in Downtown Greenway construction | Boosts local economy with restaurant, grocery and lodging proceeds | Raises profile of cyclists | Celebrates points of interest and historical sites | Increases quality of life as these cities work to make themselves attractive to cyclists | Honor of being on National Bicycle Greenway route | Their having a Downtown Greenway makes them attractive to large employers conventions and business meetings | Minimizes noise pollution | Minimizes traffic congestion | More in Anchor Cities chapter
After our Downtown Greenways are built we will hire -
Downtown Greenway Administrations | Biking Report Card Directors | Lodging Directors | Merchant Discount Directors | Display Advertising Sales Dir | Mayors Ride Director | Grant Writer | Fund Raising Coordinator | NBG Rider blog Coordinator | Coast to Coast Mile-Marker Director | Systems Administrator
It is here that we will put an administration in place for its maintenance, promotion and growth. Instead of invoking the normal public process of letting it be discovered, we will become proactive to get cyclists and their families downtown. It is for this reason that we will hire 20 NBG Lodging Directors and 20 NBG Merchant Discount Directors.
Our Lodging Directors will rely on the NBG fundraising efforts we will be using to bring the price of a night’s stay down to hostel rates for our members. In order to make the food and other services that support lodging providers affordable for NBG Members, we will roll out our Merchant Discount program. Here, NBG Members will be able to get reduced prices at all those many eateries and services that support accommodations providers. Making downtown affordable for our cyclists will cause NBG Membership to explode. This is so, because as we showed you above, because merchants want cyclists business, the downtown's will become safe to move about in on a bicycle.
Combined with POI Map display ads (in addition to POI sales and embellished listings), NBG Biking Report Cards, and display advertising sales at our site, burgeoning NBG membership will add to the other sustainable revenue streams that will richly reward our investors. All this before we connect our Anchor Cities on the ground to each other with mile markers, corporate sections, donor benches, Greenway miles, kiosks, and etc
Because most all of the above is heavily Internet centric, a Systems Administrator will also be needed to manage users, security, our interactive NBG blogs and @BikeRoute.com mail (similar to yahoo.com mail) and etc.
If Money Were No Object
Under re-construction..