Cazenovia is a great place for bicycling. With its scenic vistas, waterside roadways and challenging hills, the Cazenovia Area Community Development Association sees great potential to attract more cyclists to the community, and has begun a new project to do just that.

“We are just blessed with vast resources as far as recreation goes, but there isn’t a lot of knowledge about it. I don’t think Cazenovia has been branded as a hub for recreational activities which we really could be,” said Lauren Lines, CACDA’s Executive Director. “So, the conversation [has been], how do we elevate our usability within the community and also among visitors who are looking for something to do?”

CACDA believes it has found its answer in its annual signature projects, which it creates as a way to increase tourism in Cazenovia and provide those who live here with more information about the town and its surroundings.

CACDA’s board of directors is made up of leaders in Cazenovia’s community, town, village, chamber of commerce, preservation foundation and lake association. Once a year, the board selects a signature program to work on in order to promote Cazenovia. The programs are chosen each fall after the board members go to their respective organizations and bring ideas to CACDA board meetings. The board then goes through the ideas, and in November or December votes from approximately a dozen program ideas to find the one that will be worked on for the year, Lines said.

“[The programs] overlap with the village’s interests and the Cazenovia Preservation Foundation’s interests with the trails and chamber of commerce with bringing people in,” Lines said. “It really touches on the priorities of a lot of organizations so we’ve had a lot of great support with the [signature programs].”

In 2013, CACDA carried out its first signature program called GoCaz.com, an interactive website that guides visitors to various trails, recreational sites and places of cultural importance in Cazenovia.

Now, in 2014, CACDA is starting to plan their latest project — BikeCaz.

The intent of BikeCaz is to elevate the community’s visibility as a cycling destination, Lines said. Recently, cycling has become of high interest as a vacation activity. Cazenovia would like to attract bikers to the community as they tend to be low-impact visitors who stay and enjoy the village — and they look for destinations and small towns such as Cazenovia.

Although CACDA just started the planning process for BikeCaz, they hope to be able to install new bike racks around the village and assess local roads and businesses to determine which ones are bicycle-friendly. In order to become a bicycle-friendly business, a community must complete a bicycle-friendly-approval application and be selected by the League of American Bicyclists, said Maxine Lammers, Upstate Institute Field School Fellow and a CACDA summer intern.

“A bicycle-friendly business as the League of American bicyclists defines it would be one that promotes its employees to bike to work; they have storage facilities during the day and during the work hours; it also encourages customers and supporters of the business to bike to the business and then they also have facilities that make biking to work comfortable for the employees,” Lammers said.

Lines said the project will not be a significant community expense as the concept is mainly analyzing Cazenovia on its bike-friendliness. The biggest cost for the program would be installing bike racks throughout the community, she said. Since CACDA is still in the planning process, however, it is looking for community members to get involved.

“At this point, it seems that the beauty of this program is that it’s mostly volunteer time,” Lines said. “We have a committee of about seven community members and we are open if anybody in the community is interested, we are open to having additional committee members.”

For more information about GoCaz, visit the website at GoCaz.com.

Anyone interested in getting involved in CACDA or who may have questions, may contact Lauren Lines at 655-7651 or at [email protected].

Ashley Wolf is a summer intern with the Cazenovia Republican. She can be reached at [email protected].