Dear Hub City Cycles Members and Followers,
A few days ago the Board of Directors met, and one of the topics on the agenda was the impending end of our lease on July 31. This presented us with some questions to ponder:
- How long should we renew the lease? (as moving during summer busy season is not feasible)
- Is this shop space/location serving us well (size, visibility, atmosphere, etc)?
- Is the shop space/location limiting us from doing/achieving what we want to?
- Do we want to move to a new location and/or expand?
Here are the scenarios we took into consideration:
- moving to 52 Victoria Cres. (near to current location, double current space, double current rent, street front visibility)
- expanding into the unit next to us (this addition will double our space, less total cost than 52 Victoria Cres, no moving required)
- continuing operations as we are.
After the board discussed the direction we would like the shop to take in the future and talking with the landlord, we decided to renew the current lease until the end of 2014 or early 2015 (winter is a better time to move if we want to). We are going to review our finances at the end of this year and let the landlord know if expanding into the unit next to us is something we would like to do and whether it is financially feasible. We would love to hear your input about what you’d like to see if we had more space. Here is what we came up with:
- Kitchen – Feed people, have a volunteer that cooks, shop provides food, volunteer serves food to members using shop space (modeled after Bike Pirates & Bike Sauce in Toronto)
- Dedicated classroom space – park tool school, workshops, youth programs…all during the day instead of after the shop closes.
- New bikes (they take up a lot of space). Are customers interested?