Santa Rosa becoming bicycle boomtown

<p>When the Tour of California arrives in Santa Rosa next Sunday it will mark the beginning of the race.</p><p>And it will mark the end of another.</p><p>Over the past five months, bike-related businesses have been racing to open their doors in downtown Santa Rosa and Railroad Square before the event arrives, not only to cash in on the 30,000 people expected to crowd downtown to witness the race but to gain a foothold in what’s considered one of the top cycling markets in the United States.</p><p>Some race officials expect the crowd to grow to almost 100,000, drawn by the participation of seven-time Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong.</p><p>Partly in anticipation of the event, four new cycling operations have located in downtown and Railroad Square since October, joining two longtime retail mainstays and a bike frame design shop.</p><p>The seven stores, ranging from full-scale retail outlets featuring hundreds of bikes for sale to boutique operations offering customized fitting and frame design services, offer everything from a $160 bike for kids to $15,000 custom-designed high-end racing bikes.</p><p>Some say the rapid expansion in the local cycling business is being driven by the Tour of California, the premier cycling event in the United States that has made Santa Rosa a centerpiece of its annual competition.</p><p>Others say it’s Sonoma County’s Mediterranean climate and varying landscapes that offer cyclists everything from picturesque rides through country farms and vineyards and along the Pacific Ocean to challenging climbs up steep hills comparable to those found in the Tour de France.</p><p>But the influx of new stores also comes at a time of a national recession that has cut deeply into car buying and personal spending, raising both hopes and doubts about how long all seven might remain in business.</p><p>“It’s a terrible time economically, but we have a lot of people paying big bucks for bicycles,” said Mayor Susan Gorin. “As to whether we have enough to support seven (stores) is another question.”</p><p>Robert Wilkins, whose Redwood City-based KW Sales company has been selling bike-related clothing and energy products to local Sonoma County outlets for the past 15 years, said “the area has really matured as a nice cycling center.”</p><p>Wilkins said the huge popularity of cycling in Sonoma County makes it an almost annual choice to be part of the tour.</p><p>“I don’t know if the Tour of California needs Santa Rosa, but it sure seems like that,” he said.”</p><p>Others agree the tour is a welcome byproduct of cycling’s local popularity.</p><p>“It’s not that the Tour has changed the cycling population, it just put a spotlight on it,” said Rand Libberton, owner of Aria Velo, a small Railroad Square by-appointment-only studio that specializes in using high-tech equipment to custom fit cyclists and their riding preferences to specialty bikes.</p><p>“It shocked me to see such a prolific cycling population and only one or two stores in Santa Rosa,” said Libberton, who decided to enter the competitive fray when he opened his own speciality store last September.</p><p>The two stores Libberton was talking about — The Bike Peddler and NorCal Bike Sport — have been Santa Rosa’s cycling stalwarts for decades and both are owned by the same partners, including Jim Keene, the dean of local bike shop owners.</p><p>“We’ve enjoyed the 800-pound gorilla status for some time,” he said of his two, well-stocked stores that have hundreds of bikes on display and between them sell 4,000 to 5,000 bikes a year.</p><p>While added competition could cut into his sales, Keene said the “the cycling pie is growing in Sonoma County” with new categories of cyclists.</p><p>“That includes a counterculture movement that is rejecting the car culture,” he said.</p><p>There may be no bigger name in cycling today than Trek, the bike of choice for Armstrong and Santa Rosa resident Levi Leipheimer, a third-place finisher in the Tour de France in 2007 and the Olympics in Beijing last summer and twice winner and defending Tour of California champion.</p><p>D.J. Campagna, who owns Sonoma Bicycle Company, moved his business from Montgomery Village to Fourth Street in early January in time for this year’s tour to pass by the front doors of his 12,000-square-foot, 200-bike outlet.</p><p>“How cool is it to have a store on the route of the Tour of California?” he said.</p><p>But Campagna said his decision was more market driven. “No one was walking by my store. But by moving downtown, where offices, shops and restaurants are, people are walking by all the time,” he said.</p><p>Former Trek executive Bret Gave, who gave up his corporate job with Trek’s national headquarters in Wisconsin, is opening his own Trek Bicycle Store in the former Santa Rosa Billiards space on Mendocino Avenue.</p><p>His decision to locate in Santa Rosa was driven by his first-time visit to the area a year ago, just prior to the 2008 Tour of California.</p><p>“The tour had nothing to do with my choice to locate here; it was the surroundings,” Gave said. “The cycling around here is world class. This area ranks among the top five in the country for cyclists.”</p><p>“It’s flat riding in the city and within 10 to 15 minutes you can be riding in the most beautiful countryside in the country,” Gave said. He added that together with the area’s “mild weather and system of rural roads and steep five-to-seven-mile long climbs,” Sonoma County is perfectly suited to accommodate the needs of everyone from commuters and tourists to recreational cyclists and professional racing teams.</p><p>Mariko Fischer, who along with partner Kevin Buchholz opened Echelon Cycle & Multisport on Cleveland Avenue a few blocks north of Railroad Square last October, said they are seeking the “niche market” among the explosion of cycling-related outlets in Santa Rosa.</p><p>Their operation caters to more aerodynamic bikes preferred by triathletes and professional racers, along with selling other running and swimming products to triathletes.</p><p>“Sonoma County is one of the top places to climb in the U.S. and climbing attracts a lot of riders,” he said.</p><p>“Take Pine Flat Road,” Fischer said, a narrow, two-lane road northeast of Healdsburg. “Pine Flat is quite notorious. It is at least eight miles long and the top is probably as steep as the Tour de France’s steepest climb or steeper,” he said.</p><p>Jeremy Sycip, co-owner of SyCip Designs, got an early jump on Sonoma County’s cycling business when he opened the high-end custom frame-only design business in Railroad Square six years ago.</p><p>“Bicycling wasn’t that big at that time,” Sycip said, noting most of what was happening was road and mountain bike riding.</p><p>That has changed. His niche business, partly thanks to rising gas prices, has him and his brother “super busy.”</p><p>“We now have a commuter line. We use to do hardly any of that,” he said.</p><p>The sudden glut of cycling-related businesses has some questioning if they all will survive.</p><p>Christine Culver, executive director for the 1,000-member Sonoma County Bicycle Coalition, said the rush of biking-related outlets into Santa Rosa is a good sign of cycling’s expanding popularity.</p><p>But it also generates competition for customers, potentially to a point where survival for some is impossible, she said.</p><p>“I hope they all survive although that may be a little wishful,” Culver said.</p><p>Keene, who’s seen it all, isn’t as worried.</p><p>The cycling industry has been constantly expanding to meet new markets, from the early days of recreational and competitive riding to mountain bikes and easy riding cruisers, he said.</p><p>“I won’t be satisfied until 50 percent of bike use is to run errands and commuting,” he said. “We are getting there.”</p><p>You can reach Staff Writer Mike McCoy at 521-5276 or mike.mccoy@pressdemocrat.com.</p>