Jennifer Pittorino
The Community Bike Hub has received a $126,000 grant which will be used to upgrade its Moreland Street site through community events and activities.
General manager Silas Bennett said this grant will provide much needed funds via the grant which is from the West Gate Neighbourhood Fund.
He said the infrastructure plans for the retail site will involve expanding and outfitting an area for community education.
“Receiving funds is usually quite a battle so this opportunity to build some infrastructure is quite exciting,” he said.
“Currently, we run education for the year 9 students at Footscray High School, but we want to be able to offer that to the wider community because there is a call out for it.
“With this funding we will be able to do that, as well as outfitting a portable trailer so we can do down to areas like the Maribyrnong trail and do some pop-up bike maintenance.”
Mr Bennett also hopes the grant will allow the bike hub to begin offering classes to help the community and encourage cycling.
“We have low rates of cycling in this municipality, so we have set targets with how many people we hope to have impacted within the first year,” he said.
“After that we will still have the trailer and the upgrades so we can continue to help out the community with the grant.”
Mr Bennett said the project will be delivered within the next 18 months but the benefits will continue for long after.
This is the first time the Community Bike Hub has received a grant of this size which will finally allow them to build the infrastructure they have been hoping for.
“We received much smaller grants so this is a large one for us,” he said.
“Obviously the grant writing itself is a long process, but we are very excited to kind of see the first shovel hit the ground and be able to deliver it.”
