Well this sucks…

We need a landing page to explain our troubles…

We’ve made it 6.5 years! So far… but B-LINE is in serious trouble, and without help, we are likely to fade away and get added to the list of bike parks and skate parks that didn’t make it. We went public with our troubles in Feb 2023 in our attempt to be transparent, as well as hopefully increase support for the park. Although we have received support from a variety of awesome humans, it was way short of where we needed it be.

As of April 1st, 2024 we will be operating on a month-to-month basis while the landlord tries to find another tenant for B-LINE’s space. Once they find a new tenant, we may have up to 60 days to vacate the premises. We’ve anticipated a list of questions and we’ve put them here, along with some clickbait and commentary:

Not yet, but it’s a strong possibility if we don’t get more support. The Landlord has been working with us but we’ve not been able to keep up, and now the space is being shopped around for a new tenant. If they find a new tenant, or a few, to take the space, we’ll be done.

If they don’t find a new tenant, AND we get more support, we would be happy to keep working with the landlord and keep B-LINE alive.

Those things only have value while B-LINE is open so I strongly suggest that you get using them now. If you have recently bought a paid in full membership, contact us, and we can maybe put a pro-rated balance onto a gift card that can be used for merch. We’ll continue to take monthly dues for memberships until the last month we’ll be open; we won’t take dues unless we’ll be open for the full month.

We are continuing to sell monthly and paid in full memberships for B-LINE. There is very low risk in the monthly paid memberships because payments will stop if we’re forced to shut down. You are taking a financial risk by buying a paid in full membership, but we are keeping the option available because some folks have requested it

We’re reducing our booking window to 45 days for all bookings. We won’t take a deposit for a booking unless we know we’ll be here.

That sucks for Summer Camps, but it’s for the protection of you, the consumer. We’ll put out single day camps that can be booked 45 days in advance.

The problem might be that Indoor Bike Parks are a very hard business model to sustain for a variety of reasons including the large area needed, insurance, and weather to name a few.

  • Rising costs and Inflation: Rent and Op Costs (aka CAM or Common Area Maintenance costs), combined, make up the monthly rent cheque that we’re obligated to pay to the landlord. Rent is negotiated and op costs are variable. In our first year our op costs were $13k per month and now they are $37K. We thought they’d rise to $18k/month after 10 years, not to $37k in 6 and our business plan had zero room for this unexpected increase.
  • Lack of memberships: We probably need about 500 members to be viable in this current market, and as of writing we have 177. In March 2017 we had 250 members including paid in full and paid monthly members and I thought we were GOLDEN as we hit this target way ahead of schedule. By June we were down to 220 because about 25% of the paid monthly members went delinquent, or wouldn’t pay to ride in the summer. And then we had an endless summer and folks could ride dirt and pavement until early December. We’ve teetered between 160 and 200 since. I thought in a city of 1.3 million that that 500 members was an attainable target.
  • Covid screwed us real good: I can’t reiterate this enough… it cost us money to be closed in our prime time, and then we had restrictions that dampened business and caused many of our customers (10-15%) to stop coming because of the rules that we were forced to follow. All this while our rent, opcosts, and insurance kept going up, along with other costs.
  • Global warming is screwing us too!: Getting folks to ride real bikes, not spin bikes, inside when the weather is good is really hard. A short winter followed by a never ending summer hurts huge.

It’s pretty darn expensive, and if we had to build B-LINE today, it wouldn’t happen because all the increased costs.

Rent and OpCosts (CAM) would be about $80k/month in todays market. Our OpCosts went from $13k/month in our first year to $37k/month now, and it is this increase that is the main part of our financial issues.

On top of rent, we need to pay for salaries, insurance, cleaning supplies, office supplies, maintenance costs, and a whole bunch of other costs that keep adding up.

  1. Come ride, and spend money at B-LINE. That’s the absolute best way to keep us going.
  2. Advertise at B-LINE. Big huge corporations preferred, but we’ve got space for the little guys too.
  3. Drag people here and show them around for their first time. Telling them about B-LINE doesn’t seem to be enough, but most people are like “that was way more fun than I thought” once they get here and ride.
  4. Find a billionaire philanthropist that likes biking and send them our way.
  5. Buy an annual membership for $100/month and ride when ever you want.
  6. Follow us on Instagram and/or Facebook. That doesn’t really help but ‘likes’ can sometimes make us feel better. @blinebikepark
  7. I’m not sure if emailing your City Councilor, or Provincial MLA, would do anything, but it wouldn’t hurt. Let them know what B-LINE means to you and your family, and maybe why you think having an indoor bike park in Calgary, Alberta, and Western Canada is important.
  8. Adopt-A-Rider – Buy an annual membership for someone who can’t afford their own.

No. They’ve given all their extra money to the Calgary Flames to build a new arena.

We’ve reached out for assistance from The City, and The Province, but have been declined or ignored, mainly because we are a for profit business.

I’m not sure if emailing your City Councilor, or Provincial MLA, would do anything, but it wouldn’t hurt. Let them know what B-LINE means to you and your family, and maybe why you think having an indoor bike park in Calgary, Alberta, and Western Canada is important.

Haha. Made you click!

That’s obviously the worst case scenario, but we’ll do our best to be transparent, and help the landlord with a smooth transition.

We’ll also be having a BIG huge SALE! Merch will become heavily discounted, but it would be way better if you bought it now. 🙂

Because we feel it would only be a temporary solution, and we’re not psyched on taking donations.

But we’re very OK with overcharging large corporations for advertising!!

We could use more members

Did you know that you can pay for your membership monthly? You can ride whenever we’re open, and you get 10% off most merch.

MEMBERSHIPS @ B-LINE:

We are continuing to sell monthly and paid in full memberships for B-LINE. There is very low risk in the monthly paid memberships because payments will stop if we’re forced to shut down. You are taking a financial risk by buying a paid in full membership, but we are keeping the option available because some folks have requested it. Annual members at B-LINE get access to the facility during all our open hours, and they also get 10% off most merchandise. If line-ups occur, members get bumped to the front. Memberships are imperative for any gym, fitness studio, or recreation facility to survive. 

Adopt-a-Rider, or buy one for yourself:

Pay Monthly
Pay in Full