BIDDEFORD — On a typical afternoon at the Community Bicycle Center after-school program in Biddeford, there is a buzz of activity. Boys and girls work with staff and adult volunteers, to build and repair bikes for themselves and others, learning important life skills in the process.
When the place is busy, adults and youth are practically bumping into each other in the cramped 9,000-square-foot space the CBC currently occupies, the city-owned field house at the St. Louis Field.
In order for the organization, and the youth it serves, to flourish and grow, a new, bigger location is needed, said CBC Executive Director Andy Greif.
“It’s hard to run our programs currently” in the available space, he said. Additional space is needed, said Greif, because “we’d like to increase the number of kids who participate, the frequency they come in and the duration in the years they stay.”
“The space isn’t big enough,” agreed staff member Andrew Burnell.
In order to grow, the organization is looking to acquire a building downtown and is hoping some generous donors will come forward to help their efforts.
The CBC’s roots are with a bike program Greif ran for the Northern York County YMCA on Main Street.
When that closed in 2005, said Greif, the city’s Recreation Director Carl Walsh asked Greif to start a similar program and the city donated the rent-free space at St. Louis field.
When the CBC first started 7 1/2 years ago, Greif ran the program as a volunteer. Now the program has three paid staff members, including him.
Each month, he said, the center, which is open weekday afternoons, holds 20 to 24 sessions. Last year, 320 youth attended CBC programs and through outreach efforts it reached 1,500 children.
“When a lot of kids come in here, it gets really crowded,” said volunteer Ryan Della-Cioppa.
Starting as a weekday, after-school, drop-in activity, the number of programs offered at the CBC has expanded. The first program, which continues today, is the Earn-A-Bike program, in which young people learn bicycle skills and make bicycles from mostly donated old bikes and bike parts for themselves and others.
Through the two Bike Monkey programs, one co-ed and one for girls only, adults or older youth mentor children and teach them to rebuild discarded bikes.
Bike Doctor is a summer program during which older, experienced youth take a specially made bike on the road and repair bikes throughout Biddeford’s neighborhoods.
The CBC also holds regular bike rides, facilitates the Bike to School program for Biddeford students once a month in the spring and fall, and offers special programs like bike part art.
The newest offering is a pilot program teaching welding and metal fabrication, as a way to keep older youth involved and help them learn job skills.
Because of the lack of space, that program is taught at the Biddeford Regional Center of Technology.
While the organization teaches bike skills, Greif said its mission is to teach life skills. The bike repair and other programs are the vehicle for that, he said.
“Many of these kids (attending the CBC) are living in poverty,” he said. “They don’t have the same resources as other kids” to take trips, join clubs and organizations, and have parental support.
“A large part of what we do is get experiences for kids to get these life experiences,” said Greif, “to be more successful in life, jobs and family.”
To help more youth, Greif said he’d like to start more programs and more space is needed to do so.
For instance, he said, “I’d like to start an auxiliary business to earn some of the revenue we need to operate and hire teens to work in the business to give them a first-time job experience.”
A bike shop for adults is another idea to earn revenue and expose more adults to the center ”“ and perhaps get more volunteers.
Without a larger space, not only is growth impossible, but, said Greif, “I’m concerned about our long-term sustainability.
“In a larger space,” he said, “we can put strategies into effect” to earn revenue to keep the organization afloat and thriving.
— Staff Writer Dina Mendros can be contacted at 282-1535, Ext. 324 or dmendros@journaltribune.com.
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