After 56 years in the same location, the owners of Mineola Bicycle Fitness & Mower decided it was time for a makeover.
Barry Dworkin, Mineola Bicycle manager, said the makeover included removing racks of bikes in the middle of the store at 475 Jericho Turnpike, redoing the store’s floors in natural wood, and installing new hooks and fixtures for the bikes to hang on the walls. The store’s exterior now features a stonework facade and stucco on its sides and rear.
“We’d always made some changes to the store. This is the first major makeover,” Dworkin said.
Mineola Bicycle celebrated the store’s reopening on April 18 in an event attended by Mineola Mayor Scott Strauss, and members of the Mineola Board of Trustees and the Mineola Chamber of Commerce.
A sales event that accompanied the grand opening drew a strong response aided by a raffle for two bicycles, a chain saw and a lawn trimmer, Dworkin said.
He said that following the renovation the store has the same number of 275 bicycles on display – hung on the walls and on the floor of store.
But, Dworkin said, customers seem think there are more bicycles.
“It makes the store seem a lot bigger,” Dworkin said. “It makes you focus on the bikes as they’re displayed.”
Dworkin said the store has also expanded its selection of spare parts and accessories for bicycles, including biking shoes and apparel.
Along with its retail business Mineola Bicycle is host to the Mineola Bike Club, which sets out on weekly riding events from the store’s parking lot on Saturday and Sundays at 8 a.m. with riders of varying ability participating in the bike runs which are generally between 20 miles and 60 miles.
Dworkin said the store also recently sponsored a third annual women’s bike ride this year.
“We do it to promote women in cycling,” said Dworkin, who added that women don’t turn out in large number for the weekly bike rides.
On the mower side of the business, Mineola Bicycle & Mower also has a new line of commercial lawn mowers to lawn mowers is sells for regular residential use.
When Ben and Seymour Rosman opened what was then called the Mineola Bicycle Service at the corner of Mineola Boulevard and Jericho Turnpike in 1935, they focused on selling and repairing bicycles.
Today, the business is still in the family, owned by the Rosman’s niece, Audrey Meinking. Dworkin is her nephew.
Sales and repairs of lawn mowers and snow blowers became part of the business when the business, renamed Mineola Bicycle & Mower, moved to its present location in 1958.
But the business evolved as Mineola Bicycle, Fitness & Mower with an emphasis on high-end road bikes.
Dworkin said the lines of high-performance road bicycles, including Cannondale models, have changed the business over the past decade. That’s also significantly changed the price structure of the store’s bikes, which now range from $150 to $10,000.
But the store still has a sizeable selection of kids’ bikes and Dworkin said he still has a special feeling when children leave his store with their first two-wheeler.
“There’s nothing like giving a kid their first bike,” he said.
