In April, Downtown bicycle co-op BICAS received a letter from landlord David Aguirre saying the rent was going up — a lot.
Now board members and employees of the nonprofit organization are on the lookout for a new location.
"We're kind of fanning out looking for something," board member Erik Ryberg said. "We've got a plan where everybody is going to take a section of the town and look for a new building."
BICAS — which stands for Bicycle Inter-Community Art and Salvage — currently pays $800 a month to rent the 6,386-square-foot basement of the old Citizens Transfer and Storage warehouse at 44 W. Sixth St. That's about 12.5 cents a square foot.
Starting this month, the rent will increase to $1,890 a month, or about 29.5 cents a square foot.
The nonprofit agency will pay the increased rent for June, but it plans on finding a new location by July 1.
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Aguirre has said that if BICAS moves out, he'll convert the basement into 20 artist studios. On Friday, Aguirre didn't return calls asking for comment.
BICAS is one of the country's oldest bicycle co-ops, along with Boston's Bikes Not Bombs and New York's Time's Up. The organization has a $100,000 annual operating budget and a dozen employees, and last year it welcomed about 5,000 customers.
BICAS was founded in 1989 with a different mission — to help the homeless — and a different name. It originally was called Bootstraps to Share, and it operated out of a garage.
In 1994, the Bootstraps to Share organizers decided to focus on encouraging people to ride bicycles, and BICAS was born.
In 1997, BICAS moved to its current location.
Landlord Aguirre also manages Downtown art galleries — Dinnerware, Play, the Rocket, Central Arts and the Arts Incubator — and he curates the lobby gallery at Hotel Congress. He pays $2,400 a month to lease the old Citizens Transfer warehouse and Lucky Street Studios from the state. He said he raised BICAS' rent in order to pay for improvements to the warehouse.
"The building needs roof repairs," he has said. "Corridor lighting needs to be redone. There are plumbing issues."
Ryberg said he's not sure why BICAS should bear the burden of paying for those repairs.
"BICAS has a sink, but it drains into a bucket (no plumbing), so we don't use much water," he said in an e-mail. "We have no cooling or heating, and we don't use power tools or even an air compressor, so we don't use much electricity."
BICAS initially sought a way to stay in its current location.
"Our biggest fear is that the rent would go up again in a month," Ryberg said. "And we were hoping to get some reassurance that that wouldn't happen. But David's only said that there's nothing to talk about, and he won't meet with us."
