Downtown Denver commuters riding a bicycle will soon find a much safer place to park after a new bike station opens near Union Station.

The bike hub, as it’s currently known, will serve as a secure facility for a commuter to park a bike and have easy access to either light rail, bus or the MallRide.

“It meets our vision for transportation in the city to create an integrated system where people can use many options to complete their travel,” Denver’s urban mobility manager Emily Snyder said.

The hub will be an indoor station that can accommodate nearly 200 bikes. The 2,800 square-foot structure will also have men’s and women’s locker rooms and showers. Patrons can buy a daily, monthly or yearly membership and will be issued key cards for the building.

“It’s clear this was needed,” said Amy Cara, a partner at East West Partners, who helped create the Union Station Neighborhood Company, the master developer for Union Station.

The city is collaborating with the Union Station Neighborhood Company, Bike Denver and the Downtown Denver Partnership to make the bike hub a reality. It will be between 15th and 16th streets on Wewatta Street on a plaza between the EPA building and the Triangle building that is under construction.

Depending on funding, the hub could open somewhere between this fall and spring 2016.

The city has committed $250,000 from this year’s budget for the project and the Union Station Neighborhood Company is creating a nonprofit to help fundraise an additional $1.75 million.

“It’s a great example of the development community contributing,” Snyder said.

The idea of a bike hub in Denver dates to before the Union Station remodel; a smaller version once existed in Cherry Creek. The hub will be run by an operator that has yet to be determined. Cara said the nonprofit organization will put out a request for proposals to operate the hub and hopefully add $500,000 to the project’s budget to help with startup costs.

The operator will also likely run additional business out of the hub, including bike repair, and Denver bike tours are a strong possibility.

Bike Denver executive director Molly North said the site will be very important to bike commuters downtown. She cited a Downtown Denver Partnership study that stated that bike theft is a major deterrent to people using their bikes to commute downtown. The hub will help.

“The mere fact that they have secure bike parking adjacent to the mall shuttle will make a big impact on those who choose to commute by bike,” North said.

When studying the project, Snyder said the group looked at places such as Chicago and Washington D.C. in addition to smaller cities such as Long Beach, Calif. and Santa Monica, Calif. that have similar facilities. She said the hub will help further multimodal transportation in Denver.

“We’re growing fast here in Denver,” Snyder said. “We want to provide as many options for trave,l and the bike hub will contribute to that.”

Joe Vaccarelli: 303-954-2396, jvaccarelli@denverpost.com or twitter.com/joe_vacc