This past weekend, Downtown Suites President, Nic Meyer, rode in the Penticton Granfondo. Here he is, taking his cycling from the daily urban streets of Vancouver to the tougher and more intense environment in the heat of summer in Penticton!

Think it’s unusual for the president of a company like Downtown Suites to be active in a Granfondo? Not at all. The naturally healthy west coast lifestyle that Vancouver fosters is a normal part of life for everyone at Downtown Suites. Cycling, sailing, conscious food choices, and more.

As you know, Vancouver is a great city for cycling, and Nicholas Meyer, President and Owner of Downtown Suites, has been cycling in Vancouver for decades.

We include cycle maps in all our suite listings, and support the Vancouver Area Cycling Coalition. Here’s a photo of Nic taken on the street in his full safety gear –

Are you cycling to and from work? Or do you cycle recreationally? There are so many great ways to get around the city by bike, and beautiful bike paths are easily accessed from all the locations of our Downtown Suites.

Guest Post from Erin O’Melinn at VACC.

Cycling is an active, affordable and easy way to get around downtown Vancouver. The Vancouver Area Cycling Coalition has been working hard to bring you separated bike lanes to make cycling downtown comfortable and convenient. The VACC offers memberships as well as Streetwise Cycling Courses and Workplace Cycling Education to show people cyclist rules of the road, ways to stay warm and dry in the winter, and more.

Making bicycling better not only helps with our personal and environmental health, it is great for livability and the real estate  value in bike-friendly areas. When you want to sell not just a house or office, you’re selling a community. Studies have shown that a house within a half mile of a bicycle trail would sell for an average of 11% more than one further away and that a bikeway added US$5,000 to the prices of homes beside it. A study in Vancouver indicated that 65% of realtors would use the bikeway as a selling feature of a home. The VACC believes biking is good for livability and for business. We offer Discover Downtown by Bike maps, Bike-able Building Assessments and Organizational Memberships (Downtown Suites is our newest member!).

After improving cycling conditions in Metro Vancouver for 14 years, the VACC is about to announce their new brand at the Year of the Bike Launch Event April 28. For more information on all things city cycling, visit www.vacc.bc.ca

Downtown Suites Ltd.  joined VACC as an organizational member today. Here is Nic handing $300 cheque to Erin O’Mallin, Executive Director of VACC in his office. Nic encourages other local business owners to join as well and support this worthy cause. Find out more about them here at the VACC Site. We’ve linked their site to each of our suite listings to encourage cycling in downtown Vancouver.

At Downtown Suites we are participating in Blog Action Day Oct 15 2009, focused on Climate Change. In all our listings we include the walkscore for each suite, indicating the walkability of the area where our suites are located – and by walkability we don’t mean simply recreational walking, but walking for the stuff of life – grocery shopping, doctor’s offices, hardware stores, and so on.

We fully support cycling as main transportation, and are happy to see the Vancouver Cycle Route planner that is now available through UBC, and look forward to the “Google Maps Bike There” cycle planning rumoured to be coming on all Google Maps (or so they indicated just recently). We make sure the Vancouver cycle route planners are included in each of our listings, to encourage everyone to leave the car behind and cycle wherever possible. In this beautiful city of Vancouver we can cycle nearly year-round.

There are many new buildings in Vancouver which are LEED certified and considered “green buildings”, something we fully support and encourage, while in older buildings we encourage energy-saving approaches for maintenance and upkeep, recommending energy efficiency.

We’re excited to be working with bloggers worldwide, to help make Blog Action Day 2009 the largest ever social change event on the web.

Image by Sillygwailo