Some downtown businesses hurt by bike race closures

While the inaugural Epic Rides Carson City Off-Road mountain bike race series may have been a boon to the local economy, some downtown businesses struggled to stay out of the red last weekend because of what they felt were excessive road closures for the first-time event.

"That thing was pretty much a fiasco," said Steve Browne, owner of Carson Cigar Bar on Curry Street. "There was supposed to be an event for downtown, but there was not."

Browne said only a small portion of the race occurred downtown. However, Curry and its cross streets remained closed to traffic for up to seven blocks between Fifth and Robinson during each day of the race.

These closures, he said, significantly affected his weekend business.

"I'm concerned that they blocked off the parking at my business for no reason," Browne said. "There were no bikers there, no tents there. I want to know why they cut me off, and cut off my regular customers?"

The result was more than lost profit, Browne said. It was a loss weekend revenue that his business depends on to stay open.

"We did about 20 percent of a normal Saturday business during the day," Browne said. "For the entire Friday we did about less than 50 percent of a good Friday business."

Yvette Barrett, owner of Mystique located in the same building as Browne, concurred that road closures from the race significantly limited customer access to her restaurant and resulted in a loss of business.

"The ride killed our business. I was really disappointed," she said. "We actually had only two people in our dining room on Saturday. It was, by far, the worst weekend we had since we opened almost seven months ago."

Barrett said her restaurant was even prepared for better than expected sales.

"We brought in extra product thinking we would be busy," she said. "But then with all of the road closures and now all of the equipment back out in front of our building, which basically blocked our building all weekend, we had zero business."

Barrett now has to absorb the costs of the extra product she couldn't sell.

"Epic Ride really sucked for Mystique," she said. "I don't look forward to having it here again next year unless they do something about access to our building."

Barrett said her clientele isn't typically the younger demographics. It is unreasonable, she said, to expect her customers to have to park out of their way in order to access her business.

"Our clientele isn't the young 20-30 crowd and they aren't going to park far away and walk to our location," she said.

Another downtown retailer, who wished not to be identified, said the business she did over the weekend was anemic compared to when there are no special events limiting vehice traffic to her store.

"I had zero customers on Saturday that pertained to the event," the business owner said. "Up until 2 p.m. I only had 15 people."

She said she had approached the race announcer to broadcast a sales promotion, but only eight people had responded to that push.

The retailer also said she had to drive her vehicle four blocks through barricades just to deliver an item to a customer's pickup truck.

"It killed me," she said. "What really annoyed me was having the entire neighborhood circumvented the whole day. The bikes were only there for a second."

She said there was an early morning race on the downtown course Saturday, but there wasn't any further racing traffic for the rest of the day.

"I'm upset they had the roads closed the entire day for no reason," she said. "There's no reason whatsoever they couldn't have opened those barricades after the morning race."

The retailer clarified that she is not opposed to the Epic Rides event in Carson City or downtown. However, she feels more consideration needs to be given to downtown businesses in the future.

"I think they should do it again, but they need to be more conscientious about how it hurt the retailers," she said.

Browne called the barricade mistakes egregious.

He said he felt there was no good reason to have most of the downtown Curry Street corridor or its cross streets closed off for a downtown race that was not only brief, but otherwise non-existent for the remainder of the day.

"You can't have a downtown event, say it's for downtown, and not have it downtown," he said. "But they did it on the backs of all the downtown businesses."

Browne also wanted to make it clear he was not opposed to the race itself.

Rather, he said he felt there was little thought to area businesses and how they would be affected by the extensive barricades and road closures.

"They totally went overboard and closed off way more streets and way more blocks than they should have," he said. "If they are going to close off that many streets in downtown for biker safety, then we don't need it downtown."

He said the race itself is a welcome event to Carson City, and he wants to see it come back. He just wants mistakes made to be fixed so that this doesn't happen again to downtown businesses.

"I don't mind trying out a new event, and working out the bugs, if the mistakes weren't so large and egregious," he said. "The way they closed the streets off was totally irresponsible."

Browne said the marked course only crossed Curry Street at two intersections, so he is miffed as to why so much of the downtown Curry Street corridor was barricaded.

"They only need to block off the race course," he said. "This will be a great event for Carson as long as they don't shut down downtown. If they cannot hold it downtown without shutting down the downtown then don't have it downtown."

Not all downtown businesses suffered from the bike race street closures.

The Firkin and Fox, at Third and Carson streets, experienced one of its best weekends ever, owner Jim Phalen said.

"Friday and Saturday were the two best consecutive days I ever had," he said. "We were beyond capacity. We weren't prepared for Friday, because we didn't know how busy we were going to be, but we were very prepared for Saturday."

Once the event was over, Phalen noted, business dropped off dramatically because of the construction going on around his restaurant.

"Our business has been down 50 percent since the construction started," he said.

As such, the Epic Rides event was a welcome change to what he had come to expect on a typical day amidst the downtown corridor construction project.

"I wish we could have a bike race downtown every weekend," he said.

Karen Abowd, co-owner of the Cafe at Adele's with her husband, Charlie, said her restaurant benefited from the Epic Rides event downtown.

"Businesses were busy downtown as was our restaurant all weekend and our customers were abuzz with how wonderful all the events in town were," she said.

That said, it's important to note that Adele's was not affected by the street closures for the bike race, while The Firkin and Fox was located in the thick of the downtown criterion course.

Other businesses, though, like those of Browne and Barrett, were off the beaten path from the actual racing course.

Carson City Transportation Manager Patrick Pittenger said he was directly involved in coordinating the street closures with Epic Rides, the event organizer.

He said he was unaware of the specific complaints from some downtown business owners concerning the street closures, and he assured that any problems that arose from last weekend's race can be addressed.

"If a business has a concern, I'd be happy to speak with them personally," he said.

Pittenger said the city and the Carson City Visitors Bureau are only in the first year of a five-year agreement with Epic Rides. It happened to coincide with downtown corridor construction, he said, which won't be a factor next year.

"This is the first year of the event, and we have the downtown construction going on at the same time, so that makes this year unique," he said.

Mayor Bob Crowell agreed, emphasizing that there are more likely to be bugs that need to be worked out in the first year of an event.

“This first year (of five) of Epic Rides was a learning experience for everyone in terms of street closures and the like," he said, "particularly for those attending our churches where there was a hiccup which will be rectified."

Pittenger said the city even altered the original route proposed by Epic Rides to make traffic control easier and provide better access for residents to their homes.

"We did modify the course from the original proposal to make it better for traffic control," he said. "Originally, the route was going to be on Division Street. The final route instead crossed Division Street, and this allowed us to let people access their homes."

Pittenger said his department is due to debrief with city staff and event organizers, and they will look at ways to improve the event for next year.

"We will absolutely be looking at ways to improve access, signage, and event noticing," he said.

Pittenger stressed, though, that in spite of the identified problems with downtown business access, the Epic Rides racing event was a veritable success for Carson City's economy.

And, he said he sees the event getting bigger over the next four years, too.

"We did have a very successful event, and we had a lot of happy folks. I heard a lot of positive responses from individuals personally," he said. "But that doesn't mean there isn't room for improvement. There's always room, and we're open to suggestions."

Browne said his first suggestion would be to lessen the extent of closures in the first place to just those streets on which the racing takes place. If that is not plausible, he said, then downtown may not be an appropriate venue for a bike race.

"When we try to create a bike course that wasn't designed for it, that's hard to do," he said.

Instead, Browne suggests staging at the Brewery Arts Center on King Street, which has direct access to the Kings Canyon and Ash Canyon trails, both key parts of the race route.

The criterion, he added, could be held around Carson Middle School with easier access to the off-road trail portions of the race.

"There's also Western Nevada College," he said. "They have proximity to the mountain trails, and there isn't much going on there now that the sports programs have ended."