Fayetteville continues to lead in bike-friendly businesses

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. (KNWA/KFTA) — When you hop on your bike or scooter and head down the Razorback Greenway, you’re riding down what has become an important heartbeat for the Fayetteville business community.

As more businesses open their doors, they’re keeping the cycling community in mind.

“We specifically bought the building for its access to the Greenway,” said John Ray.

He’s with a group that recently bought a business on Leverett Avenue and Sycamore Street in Fayetteville called The Perch. It will eventually become an event venue space.

“We looked around at the landscape of our city and saw a need for a place for people to gather, come together, have events, weddings, meetings, reunions, practices for their clubs, things like that,” he said. “And we want it to be the place you can come, even if you don’t have a car.”

He attended the City of Fayetteville’s Bicycle Friendly Business Bootcamp in June to work towards getting this new business certified.

“Northwest Arkansas has embraced the bike community to such an extent that we’re really beginning to see the value of it in tangible terms,” he said. “For businesses, for quality of life, for the environment, but also for building community.”

As of February, Fayetteville had 54 certified Bicycle Friendly Businesses through the League of American Bicyclists, coming in third in the nation behind Tampa and St. Petersburg Florida. That’s also the most out of any city in Arkansas.

“Our long-term goal is to have the greatest number of bicycle-friendly businesses in our community than any other community in the country,” said Dane Eifling, the Mobility Coordinator for the city.

He hosts boot camp workshops for businesses interested in getting the certification. He said he started promoting the program about 10 years ago. The types of businesses in the city that have the certification range from hotels to restaurants to coffee shops to experiences.

Eifling said the application evaluates four key areas.

“There’s engineering, encouragement, education and evaluation and planning,” he said. “So that really looks at the business across the board to see where they’re located, what kind of infrastructure they have around, quality bike parking bike lockers, things like that for their employees as well as their customers.”

The businesses can be designated as either bronze, silver, gold or even platinum-level bicycle-friendly businesses, depending on what criteria they can hit.

Fayetteville also has the best rating by peopleforbikes.org out of the four major cities in Northwest Arkansas.

This is an organization that ranks cities on the quality of its bike networks. It looks at protected bike lanes, off-street paths, speed limits on shared streets and safe crossings.

On a scale of zero to 100, with 100 being the best, Fayetteville’s rating is 50. It was 32 back in 2018, showing the city’s improvements to being bike-friendly.

Bentonville has a rating of 43, Rogers is at 34 and Springdale is at 32.

“We want to see our community flourish,” said Ray. “We want to see it grow in a healthy manner, a sustainable manner and one that is also accessible for everybody in Fayetteville.”

“I don’t think we would want to be anywhere that wasn’t near the Greenway,” said Andrew Blann, Marketing Director at Fossil Cove Brewery.

Blann said Fossil Cove has been a Bicycle Friendly Certified business since around 2016.

“It really just came from a love of biking and cycling from us,” he said.

He said cyclists have always been part of the fabric of their business.

“We always have had a lot of people that work here that are into biking in all its forms, whether it’s just for commuting to work or they’re hardcore cyclists or they’re out on some of our mountain bike trails,” he said. “So it’s really just a natural fit for us when we heard about the program to get involved with it.”

Cyclists are also an important part of Northwest Arkansas’ economy as a whole. The University of Arkansas Center for Business and Economic Research found the cycling industry drove $159 million in the region in 2022.

Fossil Cove is part of Experience Fayetteville’s Ale Trail , which is a tourism challenge that encourages you to visit the area’s best breweries.

“Luckily in Fayetteville, the majority of the breweries are off of the by trail,” he said. “You can easily make a day or part of a weekend going and visiting just breweries that you can bike from one to the other without ever really having to get on a major road, which is fantastic.”

Blann said having this certification has had a positive impact on the brewery.

“I think it’s been a great way to build some awareness around us and that we are a bicycle-friendly business,” he said. “I think it just pairs well with a lot of the work we do in the cycling community, whether that’s some of our philanthropy that we do or just hosting community nights for the different cycling and biking organizations around town.”

Ray is encouraging other businesses to take the time to become Bicycle Friendly certified.

“This is a no-brainer,” he said. “I have a feeling like if you don’t in five, 10, 15 years, you’re going to look back and you’re going to be on the outside looking in of a community that really has embraced this.”

The deadline to apply for this year has passed, but Eifling said the city will host another certification bootcamp this fall.

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