The MRBC has been around since October 2005 and it appears to be doing well, and is looking for a new space.
‘The mayor [Malinda Miles] is really into having things for kids to do,” [Founder P.J. Park] said. ‘‘So I fleshed out my ideas and presented it to the council, and they agreed to help us out. The main goal of the co-op is to provide a space where people can learn how to maintain their bikes ... and to provide activities for children.”
The co-op is run out of a city-owned garage in an alley behind the Mount Rainier Library. The city does not charge the co-op rent and takes care of utilities.
The city also gives the co-op a budget of $1,500 per year to purchase tools, parts and helmets. The money is included in the city’s budget each year.
‘‘It was a great project that came to us. We thought it would be good thing for the youths to do,” Miles said. ‘‘It has become a whole lot more than that. It has turned into one of our most attractive non-profit activities in the city. It even earned us an award from the Maryland Municipal League in 2006.”
Park said he is looking for a new location for the co-op since the building will eventually be demolished to build a new library and community center. A timeline for the construction of the new library has not been set because the city is still taking proposals from developers. Currently the garage they operate out of is about 200- to 300-square feet, and members often do most of their work in the driveway in front of the garage.
‘‘We’re hoping to find another space, hopefully in the gateway district,” he said. ‘‘Possibly the basement of a church, a storefront or a warehouse [could be used]. Basically the bigger the space the better.”
Trickett said there used to be another community-run bike shop in Washington, D.C., but it eventually closed. Chain Reaction was open from 2001 to the summer of 2007.
Re the Mt Rainier Coop, it's great, but in mentioning one other youth bike program that failed (Chain Reaction) it ignored THREE other existing youth bike programs, in Arlington (www.phoenixbikes.org), in Rockville (Bikes for the World's Rockville Youth Bike Project, www.bikesfortheworld.org), and in Riverdale. A minor inaccuracy is that Chain Reaction did not close "in the summer of 2007" but on March 31 of that year.
Posted by: Keith Oberg | May 12, 2008 at 01:22 PM
the article also fails to give credit to Anne Villacres from Trips for Kids who wrote the actual proposal to the city for the coOp. TFK also donated all the tools for the shop and ran thier rodeos for the first two years.
TFK stepped out of the coOp because they were not doing kids programs.
It seems like newer members such as Bea have revitalized the coOP which is great but the hard work of Anne Villacres from Trips for Kids PG in getting the program started is totally left out of the stories history
Posted by: chowderbutt | June 06, 2008 at 03:16 PM
Anne Villacres and Trips for Kids did do a great job of helping to get the program started. Trips for Kids donated the tools which used to be part of the Urban Rangers Program in Columbia Heights/Adams Morgan (but owned by TFK; Urban Rangers had to close because the space they were in, the basement of a church, was no longer available). For more info on TFK and the programs they are running in PG County, see: http://www.tfkpg.org
Posted by: PJ Park | July 10, 2008 at 01:05 PM