So you want to open an indoor bike park?

The idea gets thrown around a lot in bike circles; we should open a bike park! But the reality is, the bike park scene isn’t that solid of a business plan. Ryan Greenberg knows all about it. He started Calgary’s B-Line Indoor Bike Park back in 2017. It was 60,000 square feet. He quit his job at the bank, went all in, and on paper it was gonna work. Attendance was good. It was a strong part of Calgary’s bike community. But on April 30, 2024 he had to close the place down. We chatted with him about how to make a bike park work.

Canadian MTB: So, you owned B-Line? And you ran it for a while?

Ryan Greenberg: Yeah. Yeah. 6.5 years. We just closed in April.

Canadian MTB: What happened? How come you closed?

Ryan Greenberg: Um, I guess just our, our costs went a fair bit higher than we thought they would. Blow number one was COVID. That drained our finances and closed us during our most profitable times or typically during the winter. They were telling us we can make our money back in the summer. We obviously couldn’t. We still had 100 per cent of our expenses while we were closed. Then our costs went from $13,000 in our first year to $37,000 when we closed. And that’s per month.

Canadian MTB: That’s a month! Wow. Is that rent?

Ryan Greenberg: A portion of that is rent. In our case, we included utilities and maintenance to the building and taxes and variable costs the landlord can pass on. In most commercial leases, that’s pretty typical; you pay rent and cost. We just thought our costs were gonna go from $2.50 per square foot in the first year to like $3 per square foot by the end of year ten. But they were like $7 and change a square foot by the end of five years. So we just couldn’t absorb an extra $22,000 a month. Especially with COVID and then, I mean we’re weather dependant, so.

Canadian MTB: Even $13,000 sounds like that’s a lot of, a lot of people coming in every month.

Ryan Greenberg: The $13,000 was manageable. We had good attendance. Our numbers were better than what we had in our business plan. So we were actually making a little bit more money than we thought we would. But again, not enough to cover that kind of rise in the cost. A few other costs went up too. The cost of wood doubled from when we first opened.

Canadian MTB: What about insurance? Is that big expense?

Ryan Greenberg: Yeah, it was up there. Thousands of dollars a month.

Canadian MTB: It’s part of that $37,000?

Ryan Greenberg: It was on top of that for sure. 100 per cent separate.

Canadian MTB: Wow. So what made you wanna do something like that?

Ryan Greenberg: I got the idea and thought it was a good idea at the time. In North America there were about 12 examples of other bike parks. There weren’t that many. At the time I kind of thought they were growing. Currently I think the number is now four or five.

Canadian MTB: Would you recommend someone open a bike park?

Ryan Greenberg: It’s gonna 100 per cent depend upon your rent. If you can get long-term, cheap rent and keep expenses reasonable then it shouldn’t be a problem. When we opened, the commercial real estate market was really depressed. But now it has gone up. The guys that took over the B-Line building, it’s now ping pong and basketball. They are a not-for-profit organization.
If you go over to Europe, there’s so many government funded parks out there that are just gorgeous.
There’s actually a government-funded one in Bromont, Quebec, the Canadian National Cycling Center. I’m trying to learn a little bit more about that, but it’s 100 per cent government funded and made for training.

Canadian MTB: Are you working on something new?

Ryan Greenberg: I’m still trying to find something to do. But again, a bike park isn’t–from a profitability standpoint–if you wanted to make money, there are better investments out there for sure. We were hoping it would feed the family for longer than it did. It was more of a passion project and something that I loved doing. I threw my heart into being part of the bike world.
I loved it and we miss it, but financially, unless you own the building or have, you know, money to burn it’s tough to make money off of it. As a for-profit business it’s tough.

Canadian MTB: Anything you want to add?

Ryan Greenberg: Good luck to anybody that does it. I’d love to see it for sure because it was popular and well-used. We were just unable to balance the books and then make it profitable.