A Walk through BWCG's Year

Thank you for your support for Bike Walk Coral Gables (BWCG) in 2016. Our community and supporters have been essential to our success this year and we’re proud of what we’ve achieved together.

We started the year with a Trek the Trail #GablesBikeTour to learn and explore the important work the Friends of the Ludlam Trail having been doing on the future Ludlam Trail. We also led a Bike Option for interested participants with our friends at the Coral Gables Community Foundation for their annual Tour of Kitchens. We’ll offer this Bike Option again for February 4, 2017 – sign up and join us!

On February 28, we held our 5th annual Gables Bike Day with thousands of our closest friends and neighbors in front of City Hall. Dozens of kids learned how to bike safely from our friends at BikeSafe. Our hourly bike tours were filled to capacity as tour guides, including former Mayor Don Slesnick and former Commissioner Ralph Cabrera, shared the history of our City Beautiful at several landmarks. Join us for our next Gables Bike Day on March 12, 2017 and invite your friends!

As part of Bike Month, we partnered with the City and hosted a Bike to Work Day to encourage Coral Gables residents and businesses to try commuting to work by bike for a day. We also helped our friends at The Underline for the inaugural Underline Cycling Club monthly ride. Later in March, we hosted our 4th annual Bike & BBQ with our partners at the Coral Gables Museum. Bring yourself, your friends, and your appetite next time on April 23, 2017!

As part of our efforts to promote bike safety, we offered a bike ride leader training course with our friend Mary Beth Garcia from the Everglades Bicycle Club. We later applied these techniques at the inaugural Dade Heritage Trust Miami Bike Tours series, offered by our BWCG Board Member Christine Rupp.

We officially thanked our Gables Bike Day 2016 sponsors with personalized plaques at our Sponsor Appreciation event on May 3rd. We also introduced our incoming Bike Walk Coral Gables Board officers and recognized our dedicated volunteer board members for all they do to make our community safe for biking and walking.

Thanks to the generosity of our community and sponsors, we were able to donate downtown Coral Gables’ very first bike fixit station. We officially presented a check to the City Commission on July 26 and installed the station in August at the Museum Plaza.

In September, Bike Walk Coral Gables was selected as a winner in the Miami Foundation’s Public Space Challenge and received a grant to create an urban park on the corner of Galiano and Almeria. The “Galiano Green” Downtown Community Park will be a small green oasis in downtown Coral Gables and offer seating, shade, and bike amenities. The park is expected to open in spring of 2017.

Our bike fixit station was officially unveiled on September 18, with Commissioner Vince Lago and City Manager Cathy Swanson attending and sharing the City’s appreciation of Bike Walk Coral Gables’ contributions to our community. We showed participants how to use the different tools available on the fixit station.

In October, the Coral Gables TV interviewed BWCG board members about the new bike fixit station and general questions about biking comfortably and safely in Coral Gables. The film crew also joined a couple of our popular monthly bike tours.

We participated in the Miami Foundation’s annual Give Miami Day event for the second time on November 17 and raised more than $2,000 – over 4x a much as last year. We’re looking forward to participating next year on Thursday, November 16, 2017.  

On December 9th, we presented the “Galiano Green” Downtown Community Park to the Coral Gables Parks & Recreation Advisory Board. The board unanimously approved the concept site plan and are looking forward to its expected opening in spring of 2017.

We’re closing 2016 with a Facebook goal to reach 2,500 “likes” on our Bike Walk Coral Gables page – we’re only a few short. Help us reach this milestone by inviting your friends to “like” our page to stay updated on local events and initiatives that promote safer streets in our community for people to bike and walk.

We’re looking forward to making our neighborhoods better for biking and walking with all of you again in 2017.

Happy Holidays!