Popular Seattle Area Bike Shop Closing Blame A Lousy Economy

It's a sad day for mountain and road bikers everywhere in the Seattle area. After 8 years of being a fixture in Southeast King County, Black Diamond Bike & Backcountry is closing its doors for good.

Today, we talked with owner Peter Fisher who says there is no way to keep the business going. "We're at a point we can't recover," said Fisher.

Fisher will lock up the shop at the end of March. Right now, he's having a "fire sale" everything must go.

Fisher and other small business owners say the sour economy has really crippled businesses down in Black Diamond. Craig Phalen who owns the "Swinging Arm" Restaurant and Tap House says the area got "zapped" with a triple whammy.

"We kind of got hit with a lot between the bridge, the snow for a couple of weeks, the economy, everything really hurt," said Phalen.

Peter and Craig both say when the State Route 169 bridge shutdown that killed their businesses. People had to take a 20 minute detour and that was really bad for the bottom line.

Peter has been a very busy man selling bikes since the fall of 2001. But, that hasn't stopped him from doing a lot of charity work in the area. Losing the shop means schools and others that counted on Black Diamond Bike will be out of luck, which is truly sad.

He also helped to build a bike trail near his store that many people go cruise and do jumps on everyday. James Douglas is one of those mountain bikers.

"Yeah, it is sad he's donated a lot of time and everything, helped everybody out, so for him to shut down his shop with this starting to go, kind of a sad deal," said Douglas.

When I talked with Peter I could tell that he is very passionate about bikes, and is truly bummed that he won't be able to fix them or sell them in his community anymore.

I almost forgot to mention. Peter actually applied for two small business loans from the government and got turned down twice. Uncle Sam told him it was a bad investment. According to Peter 40 other businesses also got denied too.

The only way Black Diamond Bike keeps rolling along according to Peter is if an "angel" investor steps in at the last second, or somebody buys the shop.