Tour de Cape draws more than 300 riders; downtown benefits from extra dollars

Bicyclists galore arrived in downtown Cape Girardeau Saturday morning for the ninth Tour de Cape. Many riders brought friends and relatives.

The fundraiser drew 321 cyclists, nearly 50 more than last year, who spent $15 to pedal one of four long-distance routes, ranging from 15 to 100 miles. Tour de Cape proceeds pay for scholarships for Mississippi Valley Therapy Horsemanship participants. This year's donation will be finalized after the bills are paid, but ride organizer Joel Allison deemed the day a success.

Another organizer, Patrick Koetting, credited the Cape Girardeau County Rotary Club for making Tour de Cape "more than just 'come to Cape and ride a bike.'"

Finding ways to sustain the good effects of such annual events as Tour de Cape is one part of what a DREAM Initiative survey is aimed at identifying. Results of the survey, taken in November, are being analyzed. Two drafts have been delivered to Marla Mills, executive director of Old Town Cape.

She said some of the findings may seem obvious: People want more parking, public restrooms and better access for people with disabilities. But, she said, studies and surveys validate the common sense and allow the city to apply for state and federal funding to help make changes that in turn make the city more marketable.

Allison acknowledged that while Tour de Cape is planned with the expectation riders and their friends will spend money shopping and dining in the city, hopefully downtown, not much more is done to promote that.

Planning the event itself involves coordinating a massive amount of detail, from schedules and promotional materials to finalizing registrations and safety plans, culling donations and getting T-shirts ordered, as well as setting up, staffing and taking down support stations along the four routes. That leaves little time for coordinating withe the downtown business community, Allison said.

"That would take a whole other committee," he said.

Tour de Cape organizers did what they could, arranging for group rates at the Drury Lodge, to encourage people to arrive early or linger after the ride.

It was a quirk, he said, that Tour de Cape and the Rick Springfield concert fell on the same date -- both were dedicated to raising money for Mississippi Valley Therapeutic Horsemanship. Springfield's show at the Buckner Brewing Co. later Saturday drew 300 people, but few, if any, were those who participated in Tour de Cape.

While Springfield's appearance was primarily a benefit, Tour de Cape is mainly a bike ride with good intentions.

Bike enthusiasts from Southeast Missouri and other states, such as Arkansas, North Dakota and North Carolina, came to the event. Kris Klaus of Perryville, Mo., decided to take the 15-mile route and meet his wife later for a downtown lunch.

Jill Nagel and Kayleigh Harris, both 20 and of Cape Girardeau, used Tour de Cape as a way to begin training for an April triathalon. Joe Rogers, of Washington, Mo., and Delta native Glenn Gibson, set out to find friends from St. Louis along the route, with plans to stop for lunch.

But three couples from Paragould, Ark., made Tour de Cape part of a larger weekend getaway. Neal and Jamie Adams, Jackie and Kevin Lang and Brant and Laura McCullar arrived in time for a dinner at a Cape Girardeau restaurant. The men brought their bikes and planned to ride the 100-mile route. The women planned a day of shopping.

"You don't want to know how much we spent in this town," Jamie Adams joked when the group gathered at 5:30 p.m. in the Main Street parking lot as the men loaded the bikes into their vehicles.

All told, the group estimated they spent close to $2,500 for lodging, meals and shopping in Cape Girardeau, some of it downtown and some in and around West Park Mall.

Kathleen Patton and Judy Cureton attended Tour de Cape to promote the Southeast Missouri Climate Protection Initiative and recycling awareness. Cureton also helped plan Tour de Cape.

Patton and Cureton rattled off a half-dozen ideas to strengthen the connection between the goals of a single downtown event and the broader economic influence in the district: promotional fliers for shops at the event site, event fliers at the shops, maps, restaurant coupons for 10 percent discounts, food samples, or automatically giving shopping discounts to those wearing event T-shirts. Patton also thought bike racks would encourage riders to pause for a shopping or restaurant break.

The ideas are the easy part, Allison said.

It's a statement Mills echoed as she praised Tour de Cape, the River City Music Festival and the River Tales Classic Car Show, Tunes at Twilight and the Storytelling Festival as "all good ways to bring people downtown."

"We have limited resources with staffing and dollars, so absolutely, we have to pick and choose what we become involved in," she said. "Special events are important, but we have to have a lot of different things to draw people down."

Mills said demographics can indicate how to best target marketing ideas that will benefit any special event. To that end, she has asked for the survey data to reflect differences in responses from men and women, as well as various age groups, and in specific categories, such as the 42 percent who deemed gaming a low priority or the 38 percent who would like to see a riverfront amphitheater. Survey results can also help in recruiting small businesses to move downtown, she said.

"We're asking if we can get some professional input" as to what the survey answers mean, she said. "We're just asking for the moon. We might get a few stars."

But the result has to be more than a nice streetscape or an individual revitalization plan, she said.

It has to encompass how "we function and what kinds of activities do we have that create a good business environment. We have to support the businesses that we have," she said.

Mills said she expects to have a public forum on the surveys in early November, but the date has not been set.

pmcnichol@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 127

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