Dubuque County residents might wonder whether playing host to the Register’s Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa provides enough community value to outweigh the immense planning effort required to handle the logistical conundrum of having 20,000 bicyclists descend on a city.
Let the answer be a resounding “yes.”
Hosting RAGBRAI is a little like riding RAGBRAI. Preparation makes it all go a whole lot smoother. Still, there will be times you think, “What the heck have we gotten ourselves into?” There will be times you think, “We are never doing this again.” And then, when it’s all over, and there is so much good will pouring out from the community of cyclists, and you’ve netted such an enormous accomplishment, you think, “When can we do it again?”
That’s the mentality that keeps riders — and communities — saying yes to RAGBRAI year after year. The payoffs can be pretty sweet.
A TH story published last weekend combed through expenses incurred by the city of Dubuque and highlighted some of the offsetting revenue coming back to the community — including a $50,000 check from RAGBRAI organizers that will be used to help defray police overtime costs for security. Additionally, parking fees generated from the long-term lot Travel Dubuque organized on the old Dubuque Packing Co. site tallied about $150,000 in gross figures. All told, Travel Dubuque estimates the community will see $2.4 million in direct and indirect economic impacts.
Meanwhile, money the city spent on street repairs and sprucing up along the route are costs the city would have incurred eventually anyway.
Certainly, the all-hands-on-deck raft of law enforcement required to pull off a small city’s worth of bikers cruising through town required months of planning and plenty of overtime.
But the true value of RAGBRAI is more difficult to parse. The world’s oldest, largest and longest recreational multi-day bicycle ride has highlighted the state’s beautiful rural landscape and its friendly people for more than 50 years. People from every state in the nation and places around the world flock to Iowa each summer to take part in that experience. That’s put Iowa on the map as a premier cycling-tourism destination. No marketing campaign in the world can provide the visibility that comes with having a rolling raft of thousands seeing Iowa up close on two wheels for a week each year.
Some early riders sailing down Loras Boulevard hung a right on Central when they saw the Dubuque Farmers Market in full swing. Local patrons milling about quickly pointed out the multitude of food options tucked around the corner from City Hall, and smiling riders went off to explore. That’s a taste of Dubuque not all tourists get.
For businesses along the way, the experience is one-of-a-kind — and profitable. Town Clock Pizza in Peosta welcomed riders with a beer tent and pizza by the slice. A social media post after the event noted Friday and Saturday were crazy at the restaurant with visitors gobbling up slices until the food was gone.
Kwik Star store 1184 on Kerper Boulevard shared a post commending staff with a rousing note of gratitude that everyone who manages people should read. The manager wrote: “Today was the kind of day that tests what you’re made of. More than 20,000 extra people poured into town for RAGBRAI, and it felt like every single one of them walked through our doors. The lines never stopped. The orders never slowed down. The questions kept coming. The shelves emptied as fast as we filled them. There wasn’t time to catch our breath, let alone sit down.”
She went on to shout out the contributions of every member of her team. “Great teams aren’t built on easy Tuesdays. They’re built on days like today, when quitting would’ve been understandable but wasn’t an option. Pressure doesn’t create character. It reveals it.”
That’s how you step up to the challenge of hosting a massive tourism event like RAGBRAI. So many people across the area lent a hand to make this experience possible. And leaving thousands of visitors with incredible memories of their time in Iowa? Priceless.