I live in Fort Collins, Colorado, and would also suggest spending the money on some sort of extended bathroom/locker solution, rather than a covered bike unit outside. It does not have to be fancy, or expensive. Maybe adding some innexpensive lockers and a place to hang wet towels. I've seen a few places put lockers in the bathrooms and/or larger cleaning closets with a big sink in it. You can get really inexpensive lockers that will do the job, and you want the towels to be out-of-view of office visitors and such.
I don't think that we get enough snow here to warrant an actual shelter for bikes. The snow almost always melts on roads and sidewalks in a week or so. You need shelters in places where the annual precipitation is a lot higher than in the Denver area (Denver is about 13 inches per year, as opposed to places around the eastern Great Lakes that get 30+ inches per year, and a lot of that being snow). Everyone around here just puts a plastic bag on their saddle, sometimes another one on the handlebars, and makes sure to lube-up the chain more often. No biggie.
You also need a decent bike rack outside for the above to work. The type where people can leave very heavy and secure bike locks on the rack, and not have to carry them back and forth from home (beefier u-locks, hardened steel chains for back wheels, etc). I've seen a few places around here that have bike racks that are reserved for employees only.
Last edited by Pinyon; 07-28-09 at 03:29 PM.