Cardinal Bicycle is altering the biking sport in Southwest Virginia, and persons are noticing. In 2019, the now proprietor, Whit Ellerman, had a imaginative and prescient of making a vacation spot the place cyclists of each degree and background may come and really feel at house. A spot that might foster the event of a neighborhood of cyclists that help one another each on and off the bike and propel the neighborhood ahead by way of transferring experiences.
Ellerman bought the Cardinal Bicycle location on Orange Avenue in early 2019. The corporate had been doing enterprise within the unique location in Roanoke because it was based in 1977. Roanoke households, and people within the surrounding areas, had a protracted historical past with Cardinal Bicycle, buying their first bikes and their children’ first bikes from this location for generations. The Orange Avenue location was transformed in 2019 to higher serve the neighborhood, and notably the Botetourt, Hollins, Fincastle, Daleville and northeast Roanoke County markets.
Whit additionally wished to cater to the ever-growing inhabitants of aggressive athletes and trail-chasers which have arrived to the valley in recent times, for the reason that area’s transformation into one of many east-coast’s high biking locations. That’s when the chance to develop the area’s first 11,000 square-foot trip heart, bike store, and café multi functional, began turning right into a actuality.
“When the previous Mick-or-Mack constructing got here obtainable, we noticed a possibility to create a brand new sort of bike store in Grandin Village. The imaginative and prescient was to create an area that went past conventional retail, a neighborhood biking hub that’s welcoming to all,” says Whit. “The middle additionally wanted to cater to all of a rider’s wants, from new bikes and security tools to elements and repair, to bike becoming, to a café with contemporary meals, espresso and craft beers.”
The trip heart idea grew to become a actuality within the fall of 2021, after present process a shocking transformation from a Sixties-era grocery retailer to a state-of-the-art bike store. The store options an enormous service heart, showers, lockers, café, bar, Retul becoming studio, and the most important bike stock in Southwest Virginia.
The store has weekly rides practically each day of the week to cater to inexperienced persons, mountain bikers, gravel riders, street cyclists, and greenway riders. The aim of those weekly rides is giving riders the outlet and encouragement they should take part within the sport they love a lot, present studying alternatives, and discover their tribe of comparable riders.
The Grandin location strives to be a vacation spot for bike commuters as nicely. As gasoline costs proceed to rise, the rising prevalence of the eBike (electrical bicycle), and the area’s efforts so as to add extra bike lanes and greenways – many of us are selecting to make their each day commutes extra enjoyable and cost-effective by biking. Cardinal Bicycle has gone to nice lengths, even sending service workers to be educated within the newest eBike motor and battery expertise in California, to make sure that each areas can help this rising eBike commuter inhabitants.
The trip heart has additionally began providing upkeep lessons, coaching applications together with Sofa to 20k and Shenandoah 100k coaching teams, and personal teaching. The store quickly plans to launch a rental fleet for vacationers and people trying to discover the attractive Blue Ridge Mountains by bike. No matter your curiosity, you’re going to need to observe their progress as Cardinal Bicycle continues to develop new programming and occasions for regional biking fanatics.
Cardinal is a frontrunner in Virginia’s biking and enterprise communities, cultivating a love of biking in generations of riders in a vibrant and rising out of doors sports activities vacation spot. Study extra at cardinalbicycle.com.
