For over a year the South Bend Bike Garage has been settling into its new city-owned space downtown. The nonprofit that’s aimed at making bicycling more affordable says the move has been a success.
At the South Bend Bike Garage, you can fix a bike, earn a bike or sell a bike. Volunteers fix up donated bikes and sell them at prices below retail.
In 2024 they learned they’d need to move out of the former Sisters of the Holy Cross convent so the University of Notre Dame could demolish it. The city let them move into the ground-floor of its Wayne Street parking garage for free, space that had been vacant for at least two decades.
On Thursday the city’s redevelopment commission will consider leasing it for three years at $500 a month. South Bend Bike Garage President Steve Burnside says the nonprofit should be able to afford that.
Burnside says they’re still serving Notre Dame students, faculty and staff but being downtown has also helped them reach more people from the community who are in need.
“When we were making the decision to move, when we were looking around for spaces, I had several people reach out to me and mention that they’d like for us to be closer to the west side," Burnside says. "There’s just not of resources for people who ride bikes, to be able to get them fixed or repaired or teach them how to work on it.”
