Barclays Center Offering Free Valet for Bikes at Upcoming National Concert
In a move designed to test the waters and give customers an additional choice on their preferred method of transport to the upcoming National concert, Barclays Center announced that patrons arriving by bicycle will be able to utilize free valet service to stow their two-wheeled friends at the Center.
This is the first time that Barclays has offered such a service although it has been tried at other venues, including “Celebrate Brooklyn” concerts at Prospect Park, “Movies with a View” at Brooklyn Bridge Park, and at the recent “Great Googa Mooga Festival”, also at Prospect Park.
Not every event is a good match for a bike valet, but Ashley Cotton of Forest City Ratner Companies, the company that runs Barclays, believes that this event should bring a sizable number of bicyclists out for the show.
“We knew the National would draw a big Brooklyn audience and it’s going to be nice out, so we thought we’d try something interesting” said Cotton. “We picked a show that seemed like a pretty good fit.”
Barclays has space for 400 bikes, which will be looked after by the bike advocacy group Transportation Alternatives, the same group that ran the bike valet for Great Googa Mooga and the other above-mentioned events.
“There’s a really diverse bunch of events that are attracting bike riders these days” said Michael Murphy, spokesman for Transportation Alternatives. “It’s really blown up.”
Having Barclays join in the trend, however, represents a giant leap for biking fans and the environment.
“It points to the increasing mainstreaming of bicycling as transportation all over the city” said Murphy.
Ashley Cotton of Barclays points out that offering a choice of one more method of getting to the arena to its customers is just good business sense.
“We are all about people taking public transit to Barclays Center and we know that people are walking to the arena in the highest numbers ever seen” said Cotton. “When you’re thinking about real estate, it’s always about location, location, location, which also means transit, transit, transit.”
