At bike share event, City begins crucial search for sponsors
Thursday, February 21st, 2013
at the Porltand Art Museum last night.
(Photos © J. Maus/BikePortland)
At the Portland Art Museum last night, high society donors mixed with corporate bigwigs and local bike industry luminaries. While PAM got in a few words about their upcoming major exhibition of Cyclepedia (opens June 8th), the main reason for the gathering was to wine-and-dine potential sponsors of the forthcoming Portland Bike Share system.
While the event put a shine on bike share in hopes to woo sponsors, it underscored an urgent need to raise money. So far the system only has $1.8 million in the bank thanks to a federal grant. However, the estimate to fully launch (750 bikes) and operate the system in the first year is $6.6 million ($4.7 million to get the system on the street and $1.9 million in operating costs). That leaves a significant funding gap that PBOT and Alta need to close. Given that the goal is to launch a complete system, rather than trickle out bikes and stations in phases, the City would prefer to wait until all that sponsorship money is in hand before moving forward. (more...)
