A college town like Ithaca tends to have businesses come and go, but a few stick around, decade after decade, becoming a vital part of the landscape. One such business, The Bike Rack in Collegetown, has closed its doors after about 49 years, and longtime owner Gary Weidberg has retired.

When Gary’s brother Cliff Weidberg started The Bike Rack in 1971, “he was attending Cornell Law and identified a need for quality, affordable bikes and service in a convenient location for the Cornell community,” Gary tells us. He passed the business along to his brother when he graduated, and Gary has since owned and operated the store and an ever-expanding accessory sales business for the 45 years since.

For its first couple of decades, The Bike Rack operated in Cornell’s Sheldon Court building, in a portion of the space where Collegetown Bagels plans to move this year, as well as in a former gas station building behind Sheldon Court on Dryden Road. Most recently, the store has called 409 College Avenue its home, in the ground floor retail space of a refurbished building in the row owned by Student Agencies, Inc.

“Many different bike designs have come and gone over the many years of The Bike Rack. From ten-speeds to BMX to mountain bikes to road bikes and hybrids and perhaps now electric assisted bikes,” Gary tells us. “Nonetheless, the service department kept supporting both new and old technology. The sales department saw a continuing improvement in technology both in design and materials. Accessory categories remained somewhat the same, yet their technology also improved over time. More and more bicycle specialty accessories became the norm over time.”

Many longtime customers returned to The Bike Rack to buy bikes for their children, or even a third generation of bicyclists in the family, and many have kept in touch, congratulating Gary this spring on his retirement.

Gary tells us he looks forward to spending more time with his family at first, then “will begin to think about the next chapter.”

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