Locally Owned Bike Shop Coming to New Canaan

Downtown New Canaan this spring is slated to get a new, locally owned bicycle shop at 94 Park St., site of the old Bob’s Sports building.

When the store opens—and that should happen in April or May, according to Rob Mallozzi, whose family owns the building (the “original” Bob of Bob’s Sports turned 80 on Feb. 26, in Florida)—it’ll mark the first time in about five or six years that New Canaan has had a bicycle shop. That was New Canaan Cyclery (anyone else go back 30-plus years who remembers the old bicycle shop at the near where Carpe Diem is now?)

“Work is underway at the old Bob’s Sports space and there will be a first-class, top-quality, customer service-oriented bike shop coming to New Canaan in the spring,” Mallozzi told New Canaan Patch.

The addition of a bike shop marks the latest in a series of changes to downtown New Canaan that probably would surprise someone who had stepped away from the area for even one year.

By May, not only will the bicycle shop be up and running, but each weekend will see the square of South Avenue between Elm Street and Morse Court cordoned off as part of the popular “Pop-Up Park.” Irresistibles has moved up Main Street, the old Gramophone Video space finally has a new tenant—Candy Nichols—and the space that Candy Nichols used to occupy has been promised “something very good.” By the spring maybe even the old Tuscan Restaurant on Main Street will have a new business installed, and then there’s the former Reid’s Country Kitchen space up the alley on lower Main Street (which I still find myself calling ‘The Country Cupboard’) where Manero’s Gourmet Alley appears to have gone defunct.

For Mallozzi, the bike shop should be a welcome addition to what New Canaan now offers.

“This fills a really vital void in our retail mix,” he added. It isn’t clear yet who will own and operate the new shop or what it will be called—because not all agreements on the space have been finalized, Mallozzi declined to fill in those details. Patch will provide them as they’re available.