Just Like Riding a Bike: Grant Beach neighborhood shop connects riders with freedom and fun

Neil Chanter: The growth of the bike shop reflects the dedication of its volunteers.

Amy Blansit: Bikes remove barriers for people who rely on public transportation.

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When is a bike shop more than a bike shop?

When it offers free repairs – and teaches them, too. When it shows people of all ages how to ride a bike. Or when it offers deeply discounted sales or rentals, just to get riders in seats.

The Fairbanks Bike Shop has been a fixture in the Grant Beach neighborhood for eight years, according to Amy Blansit.

Blansit is CEO of the Drew Lewis Foundation Inc., which operates The Fairbanks Community Hub at 1126 N. Broadway Ave. The bike shop takes up most of the downstairs of the building, with a showroom, a narrow space for bikewear and accessories and a large workshop area.

“What started with a couple of bikes and a few boxes of donated parts is now a resource for both those who need a bike for transportation and for families wanting to enjoy biking together,” Blansit said.

According to its website, the shop’s intent is to help the Springfield community, and specifically the Grant Beach neighborhood, to be able to ride more often and more efficiently.

The initiative is powered by avid bikers who want to get more people riding.

Around 2011, Neil Chanter, an attorney with Strong Law PC and the owner with his wife, Christina, of Springfield Brewing Co., founded Springfield Brewing Company Athletics, a group of endurance athletes – think cyclists, runners and triathletes. From the outset, the group wanted to find a community outreach project.

Chanter said The Fairbanks had been trying to start a community bike shop through the efforts of college students. However, the people involved kept graduating, making continuity a problem.

“At the same time, SBC and The Fairbanks had a mutual employee who worked both places, and word spread in both directions,” he said. “And now, as they say, the rest is history.”

Blansit credited Chanter and his connections in the biking world with helping the shop to take off.

“We had an empty office at The Fairbanks that we called the reading nook,” she said. “Bikes and parts were hung everywhere in this tiny 300-square-foot space. Neil provided the brews and the story about the need for bikes in our community, and volunteers showed up and have continued to show up all these years.”

The shop now occupies 1,600 square feet in the building’s basement.

“We have many regular volunteers that give up their time to help make sure all the bikes are safe and ready for the road,” Blansit said. “They also help each customer learn about the basics of the bike and offer more detail on bike maintenance to anyone willing to listen and learn.”

Chanter said the shop’s inventory is fully donation based, and up until this season, with its hire of manager Tim Nelson, it has been staffed entirely by volunteers. All proceeds go toward the operations of The Fairbanks, which provides the community with food donations, Wi-Fi, a library, coffee shop, garden and youth services.

Before this year, the shop was open Monday and Wednesday nights, May through September. In 2024, like a bike cruising down a hill, things have gained momentum.

“This year for the first time, The Fairbanks has been able to hire our shop manager to work the shop Monday through Thursday, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.,” Chanter said. “Mechanics volunteer still to work Monday nights to help ready bikes for sale, and shop floor volunteers still work Wednesday nights.”

Members of the public can shop during the Wednesday night hours as well, he said.

The shop has grown, Chanter said – in size, inventory, volunteers, donations, sales and now hours.

“Being able to now open four days a week is just incredibly exciting and 100% a reflection of the hard work and love that all the volunteers have for our mission – which is to help get quality bikes into the hands of folks who want and need them, all while raising money for the community center at the same time,” he said.

Serving a need
According to Blansit, being able to offer deeply discounted bikes serves a real need in Springfield.

“Springfield is a sprawling city, and when you do not have a car, you have to rely on the bus system,” she said. “Those who use the bus have to account for up to an hour to get to some destinations. Having a bike decreases the travel time and gives freedom to directly arriving at your destinations.”

Blansit said the bike shop is focused on more than meeting a need. It’s also about fun.

“The volunteers love having families come in together and seeing all the kids leave with smiles on their faces – and helmets on their heads,” she said.

Over the past four years, Blansit said, the shop has started to pay for itself, earning more than the cost of supplies and rent.

“I began to set their earnings aside in a separate account with the intent to hire someone part time and expand the shop,” she said.

She added that she had visited a nonprofit bike and athletic resale shop in Colorado and realized the shop in the basement had a similar potential.

Average monthly expenses at the shop are around $3,000, she said.

“Once we had saved about $21,000, I pitched to the lead volunteer group that it was time to test the idea,” she said. “Our goal is to raise $5,000 each month during the good weather period to help cover the slower months.”

A bike for everyone
Nelson said almost without exception, everyone who steps into his domain, he sizes up for a bike – like the mint-green, vintage-look, single-speed model he pulled out during a conversation for this story.

He said the shop pulls in about $30,000 per year, mostly from bike sales.

The bikes are donated, Nelson said, and the donations are assessed for viability. Sometimes they are suitable for riding or refurbishment, and sometimes they are ideal for parts.

He gestures to an older bike on a lift with a rusty chain, and he notes that even that bike has parts he can use.

“Even if the shifters are all gnarly, I’ll take the shifters apart and pull their parts out to repair others that are more viable,” he said.

Donations come from a lot of sources, including people who upgrade their own bikes or those who feel their biking days are behind them. Nelson welcomes them all – kids’ bikes, racing models and pleasure bikes.

“Once they make it to the floor, we price them in such a way that they’re affordable,” he said. “We look on Marketplace and eBay and find out what they’re selling for, and we shoot for a third under that.”

That helps a lot of the would-be buyers, he said.

“People are struggling to get out of a negative situation they might be in, and one of the major barriers to finding work is transportation,” he said. “Sometimes there’s a situation where we say, ‘You know what? This bike is yours,’ and we don’t charge.”

Part of his job is working closely with not-for-profits who are willing to provide that kind of assistance.

“We connect, and we figure out how to get people a bike,” he said.

Nelson has even adapted a salvage bike into what he jokingly refers to as his pickup truck, with a cargo area holding tools and miscellaneous parts.

“I try to do everything by bike if I can,” he said. “I do own a truck, but I try not to drive it here.”

Transferable skills
Timmarie Hamilton is program coordinator for the Missouri Mentoring Partnership, which is also housed in The Fairbanks and provides mentoring for youth ages 16-21.

“So many times, they don’t have vehicles and they don’t drive, especially because a lot of our clients are in foster care,” she said. “A bike is freedom for them. It gets them to work, it gets them to school – whatever – and so we try to get them connected with the bike shop.”

The partnership also extends in the other direction, she said.

“He’s got this young man that just kind of showed up and has been helping Tim out,” she said. “And so yesterday, I was down asking about another client, and he’s like, ‘Hey, you need to go talk with her.’ And so now I’m going to be meeting with that young man next week to get him into our job readiness class and start helping him find employment.”

She added that Nelson has worked with many of the people in her program to teach them to tear down and fix bikes.

“When he spots the real tinkerers in the mix, he’s really great with them,” she said. “It’s pretty amazing, what can happen in the bike shop.”