A Madison Avenue business owner now takes a leading role in embracing and promoting what he tried to prevent: dedicated bike lanes.
Mark Weber, owner of The Mail Center, envisions bike lanes as a contributing piece to a much-improved avenue. A street that’s prettier, easier to walk, bike and cross, and more vibrant with people and commerce.
A street that could be to Memphis what Magazine Street is to New Orleans, Delmar Boulevard is to St. Louis or Valencia Street is to San Francisco.
To that end, Weber has created a website, bikemadisonavenue.com. It now has just a placeholder page but will eventually promote both cycling and the businesses that will line the bike lanes.
He’s also contacting other businesses for their support.
“I’m encouraged for the first time in a number of years,” said Weber. “… In the past, we just kind of let this all slide.”
No, Weber doesn’t foresee cycling customers bringing large packages for him to ship from his shop at 1910 Madison.
But the 54-year-old can envision more customers biking in with thumb drives to print documents, or to rent time on his computers.
More broadly, Weber can see a day when Madison Avenue is so much more appealing that it draws more customers for every business, from restaurants to professional offices.
This from a man who earlier this year warned that dedicated bike lanes might put him out of business.
That was before Mayor A C Wharton sided last month with the cycling community and decided to change the nature of Madison.
Crews are now restriping the street from Cooper to Watkins, transforming it from four lanes to one traffic lane for each direction, a center turn lane, additional on-street parking and dedicated bike lanes on each side of the street.
“We’re going to make this work,” Weber said.
“Madison is an interesting street. It’s very much unlike Union or Poplar. We don’t have a lot of chain restaurants. You don’t have a lot of out-of-town business owners. You have a lot of local people who feel very passionate about what they do.”
Bill Baker, owner of Bayou Bar and Grill in Overton Square, supports Weber’s initiative.
“Basically, it’s time to make lemonade. … It’s happening, we might as well embrace it,” Baker said of the bike lanes. “Nothing else we can do.”
But by themselves, stripes on a street won’t invigorate the avenue, Baker said.
“The other improvements that would actually make that a livable street would be welcome. The concept of turning Madison into one of those kinds of streets would be great.”
Samantha Dean, marketing coordinator for Huey’s restaurants, agreed. The Huey’s owners also had opposed dedicated bike lanes.
“We might as well get behind Mayor Wharton and support this and make the most of it and drum up some business,” she said.
Dean added she’d “love” to see more improvements to make Madison prettier and more energetic.
“If we’re going to have the bikes, great. Let’s have some beautiful landscaping, some better lighting” so cyclists can more safely ride at night.
On the eastern end of the commercial district, Loeb Properties plans to spend $19.1 million renovating Overton Square and branding it as a theater arts district.
Weber loves Loeb’s project and would like to see the new Overton Square theme, or brand, extended west along Madison for most of the 1.5 miles.
“A number of my customers are in the art world,” he said. “We do a lot of shipping and packing of art here. A lot of printing of art. We do a lot of things for the art community, and most of those folks could benefit from Madison being in an arts district.”
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