Request ideas/input on setting up bike "corrals" for apartment buildings

[dg52]

Hello,

I'm hoping for any useful comments, suggestions, ideas, pictures, things to avoid, things you've seen work etc.

Here's the situation. I manage a few apartment properties around Portland. The owners want to make it easier for bicyclists. In one property (35 apartments with a big parking lot), they want to consider taking out one covered parking space (or more) and make it into a secured bike corral. That's as far as we've gotten.

We don't think the city style corrals are adequate - a lot of bikes sitting there overnight - while locked up - could be attractive mark for thieves.

Perhaps we take the space and put some kind of fence around it with a gate and a lock? That means we have to distribute the key to a lot of people and, while we really do trust the renters (upstanding community of peope), it leaves a lot of keys out there. We assume if we fence it in, we'd have to make it a "see-through" fence rather than some opaque fence (to avoid someone getting trapped in there by someone else who perhaps doesn't belong there) - even though it's a good neighborhood, we still have to be aware of risks. What if the corral proves too small and we have to fence in another parking space? That would be a good problem to have but that may make the fence idea a bad one.

Or maybe we just buy individual "lockers" (the kind they have at some Tri-Met stops or around town) so that each person has their own secured bike storage. The nice thing is that this could expand as needed - taking out one car space at a time to put these in. Any experience with these lockers? Any gripes? I'd hate to spend thousands of dollars only to find that we bought lockers that are impractical.

In all of this - we have NO IDEA of cost and we don't really know where to begin to explore resources available locally. So I searched for "portland bike forum" and that led me here.

Your thoughts, recommendations, referrals would be greatly appreciated (especially of local resources).

Thank you,

Bill