Being part of the Great Ohio Bicycle Adventure again and hosting about 1,500 cyclists was nearly a four-year effort for Miamisburg.
The city will be one of five community stops for the weeklong GOBA event, which will be in Miamisburg June 23-25 for two overnight stays. Selected towns, officials estimate, reap about $50,000 per day in economic impact.
“They’re here to spend money,” said Miamisburg Downtown Development Coordinator Katie Frank.
“It’s their vacation,” she added. “So they want to spend money. They want to really invest in the community that they’re in.”
Miamisburg officials and longtime residents see it as an opportunity to attract large numbers – especially to their downtown, where in recent years there has been a focus on small business and entertainment growth, as well as riverfront development.
“This bike event is bringing in (a lot) of people, and it will be a huge opportunity to show off our downtown and all of the work” done in recent years, said city native Doug Brown, president of the Miamisburg High School Alumni Association.
“We’re all so fired up and it’s a chance to show off the city,” he said.
GOBA included Miamisburg on its 1994 tour. But “obviously, Miamisburg’s downtown is a lot different since then,” said Frank. “So it will be a whole different experience for them.”
On downtown streets, that includes restaurants, microbreweries, shops and a movie theater that have opened in the past few years. On the Great Miami River, there's a regional bike trail and a 9-acre park featuring musical entertainment from spring to fall, including two concerts while GOBA is in town.
The effort to bring the event back to Miamisburg started with a conversation Frank said she had with a Troy city official about four years ago.
“He’s was saying that ‘You’ve got to get GOBA to come to Miamisburg. It’s amazing. It’s a fantastic event. Businesses love it. The community loves it. It’s just this wonderful event,’ ” she said.
“But what you have to do is you have to reach out to GOBA and kind of start that process because they plan two, three, four years out,” Frank added.
That’s when she said the lobbying effort began with GOBA.
“I just kind of put a bug in their ear about Miamisburg, and they came a few times secretly to scout out Miamisburg,” Frank said. “And then this last fall they notified us that we had been selected as a two-night stay.”
“So it was a process and I did bug them quite a bit to just keep on their radar,” she added.
Tour participants will be camping at Miamisburg Middle School, and GOBA was impressed with the city’s community involvement as well as its downtown area near the riverfront, said Director Bill Gordon.
“Being (in) Miamisburg - with the river - it’s going to be great,” he said.
Being selected as a host city for the event was an effort that involved several segments of the city - businesses, the school district, non-profit groups and athletic organizations, Frank said.
“This is event is made of a lot of volunteers,” she said. “This event cannot be pulled off without the help and assistance of volunteers in the community. So that’s been a huge, huge aspect.”