Bike
Week study started
By JOHN KOZIOL
Staff Writer
LACONIA — The Belknap County Economic Development
Council has begun a cost/benefit analysis of Bike Week.
The council met on Tuesday morning, said Eliza Leadbeater,
the council’s executive director, and will be looking to
hire an economist to pull together the variety of Bike Week
data that exists currently.
"We’re just in the early stages," she said,
explaining that the idea for the study arose prior to this
year’s Bike Week when the council asked member Rick
Judkins — who also serves on the Laconia City Council from
Ward 5 and on the board of directors of the Laconia
Motorcycle Rally and Race Week Association, which promotes
the event — for an update.
The ensuing discussion focused on the fact that
"there was a lot of data, but we didn’t have
documented data," said Leadbeater, "and that’s
basically how we got started."
Once the council hires an economist to do the analysis,
"we’re going to look at the impact (of Bike Week) on
all levels from a local level, the city of Laconia, to the
wider, greater level of the county and the Greater Lakes
Region, to the state level," she said.
Leadbeater said the analysis will examine the revenues
Bike Week generates at all levels, including how much ends
up in state coffers from the meals and rooms tax, as well as
what she called "spin-off" benefits which are
those that are realized by charitable groups, for example.
"We’re also going to look at the
inequalities" in the distribution of Bike Week income,
said Leadbeater, including when some businesses shut down
during the event, in addition to examining the costs of the
event that are borne by not only local, county and state
government, but by institutions such as area hospitals.
The analysis will hopefully also get a handle on the
"carryover effects" of Bike Week, she said.
The council, said Leadbeater, wants to know what the
"carryover effect" is of a Bike Week visitor —
whom Bike Week supporters have repeatedly identified as an
upper income professional — "who comes in on his
$35,000 bike and has a good time and maybe returns later on
with his family on vacation. What are the carryover effects?
What kind of repeat business do we get from people returning
to the area?"
Bike Week will be compared to other events in terms of
organizational structure, infrastructure demands and of
"what kind of support may come from them and the
greater region and from the state and hopefully, from there
we’ll have some solid information that will let us see
what are still some of the hurdles and what are some of the
directions we can take," Leadbeater said.
Maybe there will be "enough information to build a
case one way or another," said Leadbeater, "but
the plan at this stage is to do some fact-finding"
because while there are "lots of numbers out
there" as to what revenues Bike Week supposedly
generates and as to attendance figures, "we’ve got to
pull them together" and also validate them.
A town meeting may also be in order, she said, as could
be a further elaboration of a survey that the Greater
Laconia-Weirs Beach Chamber of Commerce is planning to do in
August.
The council has no expected completion date for its Bike
Week analysis and "we don’t want to rush it,"
said Leadbeater. "A lot of the data is handy but some
has to be fined-tuned a little better."
Leadbeater noted that while the analysis will be as
objective as possible, the consensus of the council is that
Bike Week should continue.
"I will be perfectly honest and say that no one
sitting there is saying Motorcycle Week should be
eliminated, but they are saying there are lots of ways to
improve Motorcycle Week," she said.
