Last year, on September 1, The Hub Bicycle Co-Op announced the closure of its flagship store at 3016 Minnehaha Ave. in Minneapolis. The final date of sales and service was scheduled for September 30, at which point the shop consolidated operations at its smaller location on Oak Street, near the University of Minnesota, while looking for a new and more affordable space.
But then, there was good news! Earlier this year, the shop's worker-owners (the Hub is cooperatively owned) were back with an update. They’d sold a portion of the space on Minnehaha and planned to return to a smaller part of the same building. The bike shop reopened in March.
So this feels like a bad case of déjà vu: According to an announcement posted today on the Hub website, the shop will again close on September 30.
"This is not the fate that any current or former Worker Owners wished to see," Hub staffers write. "The industry trends have remained unsustainable, despite hopes that they would turn."
The problems that led to the shop's closure last year are likely to blame for this more permanent end—higher inflation, slower sales, imbalanced inventory—and they're the same factors that have plagued the entire bike industry since its pandemic boom in 2020.
While the sale of their building was enough to help the shop reopen, it has not proven to be enough to sustain the business, according to an email sent to past and present worker-owners Thursday night, ahead of today's announcement. "The trends we had hoped would turn around ever since 2020 never came to fruition," that email explains.
Here's more from the worker-owners in today's announcement:
The closure of the Minnehaha location in 2023 was a calculated risk, but one we felt was worthwhile in order to be here for our community. Worker Ownership operated and ran our Oak shop while scoping for a better location, but the unusually mild winter and warm, early spring motivated us to reopen the 3020 building on Minnehaha Ave. We were excitedly welcomed back and were skeptically optimistic about the future. However, as the summer wore on and market conditions showed little improvement from previous seasons, it became clear that our return could not be permanent.
While we grieve the loss of serving our neighbors and friends, we do not take this closure as a failure. Instead, we are proud of who The Hub has been for this community, and we have come to the decision based on the very values on which this cooperative was founded, with unified consensus. We know that this is what’s best for everyone immediately affected by the cooperative; that is a core strength of the cooperative system. We also came to this difficult decision with the understanding that we too are among those affected and the desire to care for our people as best we can..
We are saddened at the finality of this decision, and we are grieving. Yet we don’t want our closure to be a somber event. We will be celebrating 22 years of The Hub: your inclusive, cooperatively owned, values-driven local bike shop.
The Hub opened in 2002, and it really is... well, a hub, with low-cost classes, affordable used bikes, DIY repair benches, and the "salvage yard" of used gear and components. For many years, Grease Rag Ride & Wrench, a group of femme/trans/women, non-binary, and two-spirit riders, called the Hub home, hosting monthly open shop hours, skill shares, and seminars in the space.
"We thank former Worker Owners and their relentless passion and grit to create a cooperative with integrity and endless support," the Hub's farewell concludes. "And finally, we thank our customers, who chose us time and time again. Every time you walked through our doors, whether to buy a bike, dig through used parts, allow our trained service techs to fix your trusty steed, learn about bike maintenance and resources from our classes and workshops, or just say hi, you helped us create and sustain the kind of cooperative, inclusive community that we want to see in the world outside the shop’s walls."
You can read the message in full here.
