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A new adaptive cycling center, the third of its kind on the West Coast, is coming to Bend’s Pine Nursery Park.
Visit Bend’s Bend Sustainability Fund, which gets its money from the transient lodging tax imposed on visitors who stay in Bend short-term, is granting Oregon Adaptive Sports $63,747 to complete the center.
“It’s aligned with a lot of our goals not only at Visit Bend but as a community,” Zavier Borja, director of destination stewardship at Visit Bend told the Source. “Working with the organizations that are doing and leading that work is super important to me and super important to us. I think it’s huge.”
The adaptive cycling center will offer community members with disabilities the use of equipment such as its Adven-chairs, also known as all-terrain wheelchairs, to help them explore the outdoors.
According to Emma Flynn, development and marketing coordinator at OAS, the center has been a “longtime desire” for the people in the Bend community.
Although OAS didn’t offer an estimate about project cost by press time, Lead Storyteller and Communications Manager Tim Neville says the amount of money given to OAS was the exact amount they asked for.
As BSF’s fifth year concludes, it will have funded $3.8 million worth of visitor-generated revenue to projects that benefit the community. The money has been spread to about 36 different community organizations, like OAS.
Visit Bend has introduced a community ballot for community members to vote on the 11 organizations that have been granted a portion of the year’s $500,000 in BSF funds. The two organizations with the highest votes will receive an additional $1,000 in funds.
The ballot will be open for the next two weeks.
The money received from the Bend Sustainability Fund comes directly from the transient lodging tax which imposes a 10.4% hike on people staying in hotels, motels or vacation rentals like Airbnb. Around 65% of the funds from that tax goes the City of Bend’s general fund to pay off core services like police, fire and road maintenance. The remaining 35% goes back to Visit Bend to help promote Bend as an ideal destination for visitors and tourists.
A portion of that 35% is used for projects that improve and benefit the community to continue making Bend an ideal place to visit.
“With a lot of underrepresented communities being left behind and marginalized to a certain degree, I think for a lot of communities we’re trying to catch up,” Borja says. “Being able to continue to amplify those voices in that community I think is super important.”
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