Amid the doom and gloom about the state of small local bike shops in Portland, there are signs of hope! And one of them comes from east of 82nd Avenue — a part of town where bike lovers don’t have a lot of great options.
After 10 years in business, NW Pro Gear in Lents has moved to a much larger space that more than doubles the size of their old location on SE 92nd and Woodstock (just west of I-205). BikePortland last heard from NW Pro Gear owner Dimitriy Kuzmich in 2014. Back then he had a babe-in-arms and called this bustling part of Lents an “up-and-coming area.” Lents has continued to grow and change and now Kuzmich’s business will play an even larger role in its future.
The new shop located on the corner of SE Foster and 92nd, “in the heart of Lents Town Center,” an excited Kuzmich shared with me via email earlier this week. While he and his crew are still busy moving in (they took over two separate business spaces, so there’s a wall to remove before the full reveal is ready), NW Pro Gear is fully open and ready for business.
“This expansion will allow us to enhance our growing service department and enable us to actively stock over 500 bikes!,” Kuzmich shared. The shop stocks new models from brands like Norco, Marin, All City, Salsa, Masi, Surly, Gazelle E-Bikes, Breezer and more. NW Pro Gear also has a big selection of used bikes. The current selection includes some sweet city bikes below $500, lots of bikes for kids, and even top-level road and off-road bikes.
NW Pro Gear’s old space was bursting at the seams at 1,700 square feet and a 10-foot high ceiling. Kuzmich says the new corner location is about 3,800 square feet and has 13-15 foot high ceilings.
“We are immensely grateful for the support of our amazing customers and the entire cycling community over the past 10+ years,” Kuzmich says. “We look forward to embarking on this new chapter with you and continuing to serve you with the best cycling products and services.”
Check out NWProGear.com, or roll over to SE 92nd and Foster during business hours Sunday through Thursday to check out the shop in person.
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I admire how this bike shop stores bikes in-store, with the upper hung bikes front wheels staggered with the lower hung bikes rear wheels. Very efficient, yet pretty easy to access bikes.
Being closed on Friday and Saturday “is a choice” as some might say.
i knew one shop owner would close every Monday to make home deliveries of $6,000+ ebikes. Another owner was closed on Sundays for inventory and church. Our local community bike shop/coop is only open on Sunday afternoons because that’s all the volunteer capacity we’ve got. There is always a good reason to take a day or two off for every bike shop owner, particularly for smaller operations.
So in the 1950s, car dealers in Portland were closed on Sundays. One started opening on Sundays, and then they all had to do it to compete. As far as I know people don’t buy more cars if the dealer is open more hours per week, so the end result wasn’t that they sold more cars, but they did have more costs, (cause they had to keep the lights on and pay salespeople to stand around…) In 2008 the car dealers lobbied the state to make it illegal to sell cars on Sundays as a cost cutting measure: everyone agreed they should work less hours, but no dealer wanted to be the dealer that wasn’t open on Sunday when everyone else was.
Anyways, I don’t work 7 days a week and I can’t really expect anyone else to do it, so for a small business that means they are closed sometimes. Yes being closed on Saturdays wouldn’t be my first choice, but this shop is open on Sundays, (and a lot of other shops aren’t,) so they might do pretty well… And of course, the fact that they are expanding is probably a sign they know more about this than we do.
Happy for them and for our neighborhood, too.
Lents is such a gritty, interesting place and ripe for biking, being at the intersection of two MUPs and Foster which has gotten easier to bike on.
Houses are small and affordable to rent or buy.
If behavioral norms could be enforced on the bike paths and the isolated and dangerous Max stops, it could be a great neighborhood for lower income folks who don’t have cars.
Good luck to them. It’s not easy being a small business in the new Portland. I hope they thrive.