Santa Maria Sun / News

Solvang city officials consider playing host to the 2013 Tour of California

BY JEREMY THOMAS

The Solvang City Council on July 23 directed its city manager to look further into a proposal for serving as a host city for the 2013 Amgen Tour of California, one of the world’s most prestigious cycling events.

City Manager Brad Vidro will meet with the city’s Conference and Visitors Bureau and local organizing committee co-chair Max Hanberg to work on a conditional proposal for the event in an effort to reduce the costs involved.

“We all enjoy doing it and we thought it was a benefit to the advertising of Solvang, but at some point it gets too expensive and it’s hard to raise the funds,” Vidro said. “We just want them to know we’d like them to come back, but we’d like a little consideration because we’re a smaller city and can’t really absorb all those costs.”

Vidro will return to update the council on Aug. 13, just in time to meet the tour’s proposal deadline of Aug. 17.

Solvang was host to a single-stage time trial from 2007 to 2009, and again in 2011. Last year, however, the tour bypassed the Central Coast entirely, holding the time trial stage in Bakersfield.

According to a report presented by Vidro to the council, the 2011 event cost the city roughly $123,000, of which the organizing committee was able to raise $101,000 through special events. The city made a little more than $100,000 in revenue from the time trial and has $8,000 left over to put toward implementing a proposal for 2013.

Tour host cities are responsible for funding service costs, permits, and infrastructure for the race, as well as 350 hotel rooms by the night of the time trial. In 2011, hotel accommodations cost the city of Solvang more than $57,000.