Citybikes sale listing marks end of era and messy legal battle

The iconic structure at 1914 SE Ankeny Street that has housed a bicycle shop for nearly half a century is up for sale. There is brown paper covering the windows of what used to be Citybikes and a soulless listing on a real estate website where it’s priced at $625,000. The only way prospective buyers would know the 50-year history of bicycle culture this building represents is the “Citybikes” name scrawled on the outside.

The sale marks the end of an era and one of the final steps in a messy, three-year legal battle between current owners of the Citybikes Cooperative who had sharp disagreements over the fate of the business. One of the four former owners, Noel Thompson, didn’t want the business to close at all, but he was overruled and out-maneuvered by other owners, led by Citybikes Board President (and Bantam Bicycle Works) owner Bob Kamzelski. Thompson, and many other former owners, believed that any remaining assets at the time of closure — which could be about $1.3 million based on the sale of two buildings and any remaining tools and fixtures — should be distributed equally among the co-op’s 50 or so owners (going back to its founding in 1990).

But Kamzelski, who was once Thompson’s close friend, saw things differently. He said the business had been losing money since 2008 and it was time to stop the bleeding, so he closed the business back in September. Unlike Thompson, Kamzelski has no intention of disbursing funds to former owners because the co-op’s own bylaws prohibit it. Kamzelski’s interpretation of the articles of incorporation are technically correct, but former owners say it was just a clerical mistake that the language was never changed (one source told me the board once voted to change the bylaws so that, upon closure, assets would be distributed to all former owners, but they never filed the changes with the Secretary of State). Most former owners believe the spirit and intention of the collective was always to share assets among all owners, even if the articles of incorporation state otherwise.

“I’m really disheartened about the whole thing. It seemed like we could have figured something out in a cooperative way without bringing in lawyers.”

– Noel Thompson
(Photo: Wizard Cycle Service)

Kamzelski doesn’t see it that way. “I’m honoring the intention of the founders, which was to not distribute [assets] to the former owners,” Kamzelski told me in an interview in February. “Because that’s what they wrote in the articles of incorporation.”

After the shop closed its doors late last year, Kamzelski, Thompson, and the two other current owners went through a mediation process with their lawyers to settle disagreements about the asset disbursement issue and a wrongful termination claim by Thompson that was outlined in the 2022 lawsuit. Thompson said he was fired on a technicality when he claimed sick pay but never took days off (because he says there was no one else to cover his shifts), and he feels the real reason was retaliation for not being on board with Kamzelski’s plans. Kamzelski told BikePortland back in February he and the board voted to fire Thompson because of timesheet fraud.

That mediation avoided the cost and stress of court proceedings. It also finalized an agreement for Kamzelski and two other current owners — Claire Nelson and Bryce Hutchinson — to split 75% of the proceeds among the three of them, while Citybikes would distribute the other 25% to Thompson and all former owners based on the hours they worked at the co-op.

“I’m really disheartened about the whole thing,” Thompson shared with me back in February. “It seemed like we could have figured something out in a cooperative way without bringing in lawyers.”

“I think that I have been treated very poorly by these former owners, and I have no interest in helping them.”

– Bob Kamzelski
(2013 photo by Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)

For his part, Kamzelski says Thompson and former owners are spreading misinformation. “They’re just trying to bad-mouth me and make me seem like a bad person because they’re upset.” When asked why so many former owners stood by claims that Kamzelski was behind the “Musking of Citybikes” and trying to pull of a “heist in broad daylight,” Kamzelski said, “I think it’s because there’s a bunch of money on the table now, and it’s real obvious to them that they are not legally due to get any of it — and they just need a scapegoat. People need to be angry about something and I’m the most convenient target.” 

Kamzelski then flipped claims of financial greed back to former owners. “Now that there’s money on the table, they’re like, ‘I want that!’ even though it was never their intention from the get-go. So if you’re waving a check in front of somebody’s face, somebody’s like, ‘Oh, I want that now!'”

When I pressed Kamzelski about abiding by the spirit of the co-op (versus a literal reading of the bylaws) and asked if he’d consider distributing his assets among former owners like Thompson has chosen to do, he said the public acrimony influenced his decision. “I think that I have been treated very poorly by these former owners, and I have no interest in helping them… they make it sound like I’m doing something illegal, which I’m not. I don’t really like that I’m being turned into the community punching bag by people who are just irate because they fucked something up and it’s not my fault.”

For the founder of Citybikes, Roger Noehren, the idea that the shop would close is something he never allowed himself to consider. “I assumed that it would carry on in perpetuity, with young, enthusiastic cooperators seguing into the co-op to take the reins from others who were moving on to other endeavors,” he wrote in an essay typed out on the eve of the mediation and shared with BikePortland. “Ideally, I would like to see Citybikes revived with Noel and a new group of idealistic stewards. The remaining proceeds from the sale of the Annex [the other Citybikes building 12 blocks west on Ankeny that sold for $1 million after it closed in 2016] could be an endowment or rainy day fund, to underwrite another apprentice program, keep workers employed through the leaner winter months and cover any losses they might incur as they reestablish the business to become profitable again.”

That plan is all but impossible now. Not just because of how the settlement agreement turned out, but because Thompson recently opened a new shop of his own. After 26 years at Citybikes, Thompson is now sole owner of Wizard Cycle Service on NE 12th Avenue, just 14 blocks from the old Citybikes repair shop.

“I’m sad to see Citybikes go,” Thompson told me in a recent interview. “I did everything I could to try to keep that place open and stick to the values that I understood Citybikes had.”

CORRECTION, 3:27 pm: This story originally stated that Kamzelski alone chose to close the shop and fire Thompson. It has been corrected to state that those decisions were made by the entire Citybikes board. The story has also been edited to clarify that Thompson isn’t going to be given 25% of the asset proceeds, which he would then distribute to the remaining owners. To be clear, Citybikes will distribute all funds, with Thompson getting his legal fees paid for as well as a disbursement based on his hours worked at the co-op, along with all other former owners. I regret any confusion.