As the owners of the Freeride Bike Shop were hanging a sign in front of their soon-to-open mountain bike store in Idaho Springs on Monday, a resident drove up, welcomed them to the neighborhood and let them know how much he’d been looking forward to the debut of their business.
Encouraged by the town’s steep 400-acre mountain bike park and a $71-million sightseeing gondola that will soon provide bikers with a lift if they’d rather not pedal up the mountain, Thomas Keane and Monica Hall moved to the quirky, historic town of 2,000 last April, dreaming of Freeride. So the impromptu welcome made the nervous first-time entrepreneurs smile.
“People going out of their way to say things like that, people are just really kind and constantly surprising me,” Hall said. “Itap the small town vibes of this community. Itap really special. Everyone kind of knows everyone in this town, and we’re like being introduced to everyone.”
A grand opening for the Mighty Argo Cable Car is set for Friday morning. The 1.3-mile gondola with a vertical rise of 1,300 feet is expected to give the town a tourism boost, but it’s only part of the reason the town’s sleepy east end is being transformed. It’s also been driven by the Virginia Canyon Mountain Park, owned and operated by the town, which began attracting hordes of mountain bikers on weekends in the fall of 2024.
When Keane and Hall moved to town a year ago, it didn’t have a bike shop. When they open in a few days, there will be three.
“I’m the oldest bike shop in town,” declared Brian Sneider, owner of Virginia Canyon Bicycle Service, which opened in September. Another shop, ChainLynx Bike Shop, opened this week.
Other businesses have felt the effect of the mountain bike park and the potential impact of the gondola. Brian Ormerod opened Big B’s Soup and Grilled Cheese shop seven years ago, staking out a location near where the lower terminal of the gondola would be built. It’s been a long wait for him because the gondola, initially proposed in 2019, was delayed after the investor group was scammed out of $4.5 million by a title company. Construction finally began last year.
Ormerod is convinced the gondola will be a boon for the town that hugs Interstate 70 in Clear Creek County, 20 miles west of the Denver metro area.
“This new gondola creates a destination, so we are now no longer just a pit stop to gas up and go,” said Ormerod, who was the chef at the Tommyknocker Brewery on the west end of town for 17 years. “Itap absolutely amazing what itap doing for this end of town.”
Mayor Chuck Harmon has the sales tax receipts to prove it.
“We have split out east end and west end, because forever, 90% of the emphasis on commercial was our downtown,” said Harmon, referring the west end. “It got most of the foot traffic. But the east end has really come on strong, particularly with the opening of the mountain park. The east end is out-performing the downtown by about 15-20%. Now we have upwards of 1,200 people on a busy weekend day experiencing the park.”
Scott Yard and his brothers own the Smokin’ Yards BBQ on the east end, a business their father opened in 2008, along with Yard’s Tap House across the street. When the mountain park opens for the season, their businesses attract hordes of mountain bikers. It opened for this season last weekend.
“It is incredible how quickly the business increases as soon as these trails open,” Yard said. “Itap really incredible to see every single parking spot taken up on a Friday, Saturday and Sunday from 7 a.m. until 5 p.m.”
Sneider, who previously managed a bike shop in Evergreen, opened his shop on Sept. 6.
“Last fall the street was packed with cars,” Sneider said. “I’d see a car load up a bike and pull out, and another car would pull right in and unload another bike. It was cool to see that many people riding around here.”
The mountain park is free for users, open to hikers as well as mountain bikers.
“The uphill bike trails are also for hikers,” Sneider said. “There’s biker-only trails that are directional downhill with no hikers allowed on them. It allows bikers to be abe to ride knowing there is nobody coming up — nobody should be in their way. It gives people who want to go really fast downhill a place that is safe to go, but it also means they’re not on another trail in the Front Range like Mount Falcon or Apex or any of the other trails, running over hikers.”
Cody Bower and his wife, Helena Schmidt, had a dream to own a bike shop and initially considered Georgetown, where they live. They knew about the growing buzz in Idaho Springs, though, and when a location became available in December, they pursued it. They signed the lease in March and opened on Monday. Their ChainLynx Bike Shop is set up for demos, rentals, repairs and retail.
“Stepping away from a career job into this risk, itap scary,” said Bower, who previously worked fulltime as a building engineer at hospital in Frisco. Selling a $10,700 mountain bike on their first official day in business was encouraging.
“It was very special,” Bower said. “Needless to say, it was emotional.”
The mayor concedes some residents have concerns about the impact the gondola may have on the character of their quiet town.
“Itap not completely unfounded,” Harmon said. “This is happening basically across from our Safeway in what has been a pretty sleepy part of our town. I really think folks will see this is going to be a nice amenity for locals and visitors alike. Itap only going to bring an economic uplift. I don’t think itap going to create much hardship for anybody. This was very well planned, and I think by the end of the summer, people will be breathing a big sigh of relief.”
