Some businesses and residents on a road near Sloan’s Lake are hoping the city takes a U-turn on a proposed protected bike lane that would eliminate street parking for the entire corridor.
“I want to make it very clear that if you guys do not omit our corridor, you will very likely … kill my business,” Sarah Green said in a meeting with city officials last Friday.
Green has run Leroy’s Bagels at 4432 W. 29th Ave. since 2017. By all metrics, her shop is doing great, selling over a thousand bagels a day with plans to expand to a second location. But Denver’s Department of Transportation and Infrastructure, DOTI, could soon take away what Green sees as a vital lifeline for her business: parking.
“The majority of my sales come from people driving into town,” Green said. “The reality is I have people who bike and I have people who walk on the weekends. But bear in mind that we live in Colorado, we have inclement weather six months of the year … I know I won’t be able to be profitable in the way I have been.”
DOTI is considering two options for 29th Avenue between Sheridan and Zuni, which already has an existing unprotected bike lane in both directions and no street parking on the north side of the street.
The first option is to implement “traffic-calming” measures such as speed bumps, improved signage and a narrowed roadway. The second option would do the same but also beef up the bike lane with protections, eliminating street parking on the south side of the road.
In a meeting with Councilwoman Amanda Sandoval, Green and Seth Rubin, another business owner on the street, DOTI officials told them to expect a decision by the end of this week.
“The only thing we can promise is we will be transparent in the process,” Molly Lanphier, a DOTI staffer, told them, according to a recording of the meeting obtained by BusinessDen.
But not all residents and nearby businesses have been satisfied with the process.
“This whole process has been very rushed and concerning. I feel like they’re making these decisions in a vacuum and are purposely leaving businesses out of it,” said Christina Trostel, owner of Salon Ostara and the building it occupies at 5020 W. 29th Ave.
Trostel said she first heard of the bike lane proposal earlier this month via a mailed flier. She received it on Tuesday, and it advertised a meeting the next day. Trostel said she scanned it quickly and ignored the notice, figuring it had to do with construction on the street.
The same thing happened on the following Thursday, when she received an email for a meeting the next day, Trostel said. In both instances, she said that the late notices made it impossible for her to attend anyway, since her appointments those days had been on the books for months, as is typical for a salon.
“Women do not ride their bikes to get their hair done … They’re not gonna put a helmet over a $200 cut and color,” Trostel said.
DOTI has done two rounds of outreach, department spokeswoman Nancy Kuhn told BusinessDen in an email.
The first was in April, a community event at SloHi Bike Co., 4434 W. 29th Ave., “to discuss current conditions along W 29th Avenue,” DOTI’s website reads. An owner of the business told BusinessDen Tuesday he was not informed enough to have an opinion on the potential changes.
Feedback from the meeting included concerns from bikers about drivers running red lights, garbage cans and cars being parked in the bike lanes. Speeding along the entire corridor was noted as a concern. The current speed limit on the road is 30 miles per hour; both DOTI proposals would reduce the limit to 25 MPH.
“DOTI distributed approximately 7,000 mailers and flyers to addresses on and surrounding the corridor ahead of this event, as well as sent an email blast to over 1,300 people. The project team met with Councilwoman Sandoval and notified stakeholders ahead of the pop-up event. 50+ members of the public showed up to the event,” the department’s website states.
One resident on the street, Alicia Wilkinson, recalls getting that first notice. She lives near Leroy’s and said a protected bike would not only eliminate parking at her home, but would impede trash collection as well.
“It feels like everyone thought we were in this discussion of what we can do to make this a safer street, to there was a plan and a project that nobody knew what was happening,” she said.
Wilkinson’s husband works remotely, as do her neighbors. They have two cars, so one sits in the driveway while the other remains on the street. She’s not sure where she will be able to park. Her trash, compost and recycling are all picked up in the parking lane.
Earlier this month, DOTI began circulating a survey on the two proposals for residents and business owners to weigh in on the two proposals, and the department “will move forward in implementing the community’s preference,” Kuhn said.
The corridor is under special attention because Kuhn said the street was on the city’s “high-injury network,” which are roads where “the majority of traffic fatalities and serious injuries are occurring.”
Since 2018, there have been 296 accidents in the corridor, there was one fatal crash in 2020 and seven crashes involving bicycles, two of which involved serious bodily injuries, said Kuhn, citing “DPD reports.”
However, some business owners questioned the methodology for selecting this road for improvement.
“The installation of a bike lane in 2015 between Sheridan and Federal seems to have done its job,” said Seth Rubin, who owns Rise & Shine biscuit shop on 29th. “The only two crash data points that involved bicycles, one, were not within the business corridor from Sheridan to Tennyson, but, two, also predate the bike lane.”
Rubin is referring to city data which shows two bicycle fatalities on the street, both dating back a decade.
“It would strike me that this would be an opportunity to use the resources elsewhere,” he said.
Rubin, who also has Rise & Shine locations near Wash Park and in Lakewood, is an avid cyclist. And like Green and Trostel, most of his business comes from people parking outside and grabbing a bite to eat.
All the business owners stressed one thing in particular: They are not anti-bike, but are simply opposed to the removal of their parking.
“My degree is urban and environmental planning with a focus on transportation … I worked for an entity that focused on transportation options in the Cherry Creek area in the Colorado Boulevard corridor. So I know the importance of providing transportation options and moving the needle when it comes to how people get around in Denver,” Rubin said.
Another consideration, particularly for Rubin and Green, is how they will receive inventory from delivery trucks if a protected bike lane is implemented.
“I actually do my deliveries for the restaurant and I cannot imagine what it’s going to be like if I’m in a situation of having to park, minimum 200 feet away, and move 450 pounds of flour, 14 cases of 15 dozen eggs, gallons and gallons of milk and buttermilk and everything else that goes into this little biscuit shop,” he said.
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