Wheels in Wine Country

“Come ride where the pros ride.”

That’s what Brad Calkins, executive director of the Santa Rosa Convention and Visitor’s Bureau, would like visitors and locals alike to remember when they think of Sonoma County. While the Sonoma and Napa valleys have long been considered a mecca for the wine industry, there’s another burgeoning industry that’s putting this area on the world map: cycling. With approximately 30 businesses just in Sonoma County devoted to cycling-related commerce, from bicycle manufacturers to bike rentals to cycling retailers, it’s no wonder we’re all seeing more and more cyclists these days, especially on those picturesque backroads this area is famous for.

“We’ve seen the cycling scene in Sonoma County just explode,” says Jim Keene, a managing partner of Norcal Bike Sport and the Bike Peddler in Santa Rosa. “If you’ve been around a while, you could see where it was headed and why it was heading in that direction. We have the perfect terrain and enthusiasm here as well as the scenery. It’s a cycling mecca in terms of people coming from everywhere [to cycle here]. We have a really motivated cycling community and industry in Sonoma County. If you look at events like the GranFondo [see below], the Wine County Century, the Vineman Triathlon—these are all really big events that bring in thousands of people each time.”

Gearing up

Despite the rise in cycling’s popularity, from weekend enthusiasts to more and more American professional cyclists on the global racing scene, the local industry as a whole is still young, with plenty of room for growth.

“We’ve had consistent growth each year [since opening the business in early 2009], with a lot more competition,” says Bret Gave, owner of the Trek Bicycle Store in Santa Rosa. “We’ve seen constant growth here. I can’t say that for everybody, but it’s a good sign for us, and it’s a good sign for the future.

Michael Sayers, assistant sports director for the BMC Pro Racing Team (which started in Santa Rosa in 2006), credits the increase in cycling not just to the rise in enthusiasm for the sport of professional racing, but also to the vision of those in the cycling industry and to the overall enjoyment of the sport. BMC began as a small amateur team and progressed through every level of professional cycling, from a small pro team to a medium size pro team to a pro tour (first division) team. It’s now considered by many people to be the biggest team in the world.

“The great thing about the cycling industry is that it’s relatively recession-proof,” says Sayers. “If you look at the industry as a whole, not just the racing side of it but retail as well, you get this scenario where you have people who used to spend their money on cars, who now can get similar technology with bikes—and pay one-tenth of the cost. People are now getting more interested in fitness and they’re discovering that cycling is a great way to exercise. It’s a very social sport, and they’re finding out it’s an activity they can do with friends and family and, at the same time, get a nice workout and have some pretty technologically advanced equipment to use that’s relatively affordable. I think the increase in cycling just speaks volumes to the industry as a whole, not just the racing part, and how progressive it is.”

Not only is the rise in cycling good for the environment and good for people’s health, it’s also good for business—both for those directly affected in terms of cycling-related commerce as well as for many indirectly affected businesses such as hotels, restaurants, wineries and others in the tourism industry. And not only is it growing, it’s sustainable.

“Even if you weren’t including local commerce and the money that’s spent here with hotels and restaurants surrounding some of these [bike-related] events—and even just the cycling-specific trade that takes place here alone—is huge,” says Keene. “It’s a fairly renewable resource, much like grapes and wine tasting. There’s a tremendous amount of events taking place here and the fact that so many bike shops here can make a pretty decent living—this is a very unusual area.”

That makes cycling not just a boon for business, but for local government as well, relying on the resulting tax revenue to support public services. This has made local government officials take this industry seriously in supporting its growth through infrastructure, cycling initiatives and by hosting events.

“Cycling is a huge revenue source for the county, for tourism,” says Gave, explaining why he was asked to represent this growing industry on the board of directors for the Visitor’s Bureau of Santa Rosa. “We have some really great people who work for the city [who’ve helped to further cycling infrastructure]. You see bike lanes popping up all over the place. I think the city is almost working faster than the population is converting, which is really great to see. I think bike lanes will get more cyclists using them.”

While not everyone is thrilled with more cyclists on the road, and one can occasionally hear grumbling from motorists about cyclists interfering with traffic, Keene feels that this reaction would be mitigated if naysayers would realize the huge economic impact these biking enthusiasts have on the county.

“If there were a way to put together some sort of measure as to what all these [cycling] events and the industry does economically for the county, it might give motorists pause and might make them not see all these cyclists as annoyances,” says Keene. “People might be a little more tolerant if they realized what a big industry it is and what it does for our county.”

Amgen Tour of California

One of the biggest cycling-related events providing an economic boon for both local businesses and government is the Amgen Tour of California, America’s most successful cycling race and one of the nation’s largest and most recognized annual sporting events. Starting on May 13, this prestigious, eight-day cycling road race features elite professional teams and athletes from around the world. In 2011, 18 of the world’s top professional cycling teams competed in a challenging course that traversed nearly 800 miles throughout the state of California. These included UCI (Union Cycliste Internationale is the world governing body for sports cycling that oversees international competitive cycling events) professional teams such as BMC Racing Team [USA], Team Garmin-Cervelo [USA], HTC-Highroad [USA], Team RadioShack [USA], Liquigas-Cannondale [Italy], Sky Procycling [Great Britain], Rabobank Cycling Team [Netherlands], Saxo Bank Sunguard [Denmark], and Leopard Trek [Luxemborg].

While Santa Rosa has been a participating city almost every year since the race’s beginning in 2006, this year holds a special honor. The city has been chosen to host the overall start of the race and has committed $580,000 to do so—almost three times as much as hosting a stage finish. “To be given an overall start is a huge honor,” says Calkins. “We do have a track record of very successful different stages throughout the race’s life span.”

None of this financial support is coming from the city’s general fund. Rather, it’s all been raised through donors and corporate sponsors. Businesses, wineries, private individuals, Sutter Health and others in the medical sector, various downtown merchants, and even the Santa Rosa cycling club have contributed to bringing this event to town. A pledge of $100,000 came from Santa Rosa’s Business Improvement Area, a tourism-based assessment district, and $120,000 came from Santa Rosa professional cyclist Levi Leipheimer’s King Ridge GranFondo cycling event, held every fall since 2009 as a fund-raising tool to help the city of Santa Rosa raise money for hosting stages of the tour of California. (The GranFondo also contributes funds to West County schools and fire stations along its route, Sonoma Humane Society’s Forget Me Not Farm and the LiveStrong organization.)

“It [the event] isn’t something that’s owned by the city,” says Raissa de la Rosa, economic development specialist for the city of Santa Rosa and co-chair of the local organizing committee for the tour. “While I work for the city, and many people on the local organizing committee, just by default, are associated with government—such as public safety, public works, traffic engineering—none of the money comes out of the general fund. We have to raise it. So this is all the blood, sweat and tears of an entire community.”

The overwhelming support by local citizens and visitors alike has no doubt been a key factor in tour organizers choosing Santa Rosa again and again as a stop along the tour, and, this year, as the tour’s start. Santa Rosa has been a participating city in one way or another since the tour’s inception in 2006 (it consulted on the 2011 race but was not a stage host). De la Rosa recalls her nervousness that first year in trying to make the stage finish in Santa Rosa a success.

“In 2006, nobody really understood what this event was going to be,” she says. “I remember working with our local organizing committee just thinking, ‘Oh God, I hope people show up!’ So much effort and hard work went into this event—we hoped we were doing it right. The day of the race stage, we were out at 6 a.m. to turn a typical city street into a sports arena. Throughout the day, I remember seeing the crowds coming in but was too busy to look up.

“When I finally got up on the announcer’s stage and looked around, I was floored. It was unbelievable—breathtaking. The cyclists said they couldn’t even hear their ear pieces [which they use to communicate with coaches and teammates]. We just blew them away with our enthusiasm, our crowds and how smoothly the production went. We set the bar and became the gold standard for the rest of the tour. The thing that was amazing was the energy of the crowd—the screams, the excitement, the cowbells, the clappers—it was crazy! One of the challenges through the years is to not make it mundane or a right for us, because it isn’t a right. We have to bid for this thing every year.”

Keene agrees that that initial success in 2006 really put Santa Rosa on the map for cycling events and was a key contributor to being considered as host for the start of the race. “That first year and that first stage coming in Santa Rosa was such an overwhelming success that the organizers of the tour of California pretty much grandfathered Santa Rosa into the picture every year,” he says. “What’s really significant about that race is that it’s a pretty competitive bidding process for the cities. It’s modeled after the big tours you see in Europe, the most notable of which is the Tour de France, where cities have to put in bids much like the Olympics, several years in advance, and they have to demonstrate that they have the infrastructure to host such a big caravan coming through town. What we’ve achieved by bringing that race to town is worldwide recognition where you see these beautiful, stunning views of Sonoma County and it makes people want to come here.”

With the Amgen Tour of California now the most successful cycling race in America, this event has brought the sport to a new level of popularity in the United States and allowed American professional cyclists to have a chance to compete in a world-class race that they’ve traditionally had to travel outside of the United States to find.

“The fact that you get Europeans who ask to go to this race every year, in and of itself, says a lot, because most of the time, European racers don’t want to go off the European continent,” says Sayers. “The fact that they’re willing to come here and race, it really speaks volumes to the race.”

That, in turn, brings about far-reaching economic benefits in increased tourism.

“Sonoma County has become a ‘cycling destination,’” says Calkins. “The Amgen tour really brought out that awareness, especially for noncyclists or amateur cyclists. Professionals and avid cyclists have always considered this a premier cycling destination.”

The Amgen Tour of California alone, because of the increased length of time that teams, event organizers and visitors will be spending in the city this year due to hosting the start, has an estimated economic impact of $6.8 million, including the creation of nearly 70 jobs and the generation of $81,500 in taxes. This is not to mention the long-term ramifications for the huge, $1.3 billion tourism industry in Sonoma County.

“This race isn’t just a race but is economic development in a really interesting way,” says de la Rosa. “It perpetuates itself in ways that, in 2006, I wouldn’t have expected. In the end, what we need is [not only sales and property taxes for economic development purposes] but also a quality of life and a location in which we retain our creative class, encourage entrepreneurialism and encourage a workforce that goes to school here and stays here. What retains a creative class is that they want to live in places that are interesting, and it’s easier for businesses to attract people to places where they want to live.”

The tour of California is just one of many of these types of events that make this a particularly interesting place to live, not to mention our beautiful surroundings.

Share the road

So what’s next for cyclists and the cycling industry? Is there indeed still room for growth and for more improvements in infrastructure to support cyclists?

“I moved here about 15 years ago and I was struck with how rabid a cycling community we had, and yet our infrastructure was pretty poor compared to today,” says Keene. “If you’re fairly new to cycling, it may not seem all that great, but things have significantly improved in the 15 years I’ve been here. Yet I don’t really think it’s in question that we could make things a lot better.”

According to Keene, the county has already implemented several measures such as traffic calming improvements on four-lane boulevards (paring them down to two lanes with a divider in the middle that lets bikers merge and cross traffic safely). Research has shown that, in residential areas, doing this only insignificantly slows traffic yet maximizes traffic flow. With four lanes, some drivers tend to dart in and out of lanes to get ahead, making traffic less streamlined. In addition, most new development areas are now required to provide pedestrian and bike lanes, and these new requirements have already shown a huge increase in available bike lanes.

“I think this market has yet to completely mature,” says Gave. “The city of Santa Rosa is far from maturing as a bicycle community. There’s still a lot more room to develop—commuters, kids riding bikes to school, even recreational cycling—there’s still room to grow.”

So move over motorists—you’ll probably be seeing even more cyclists in coming years. Let’s share our road space with our two-wheeled cousins—it’s good for the economy!