ARLINGTON, Va. (BRAIN) — Conte's Bike Shop will open its eighth location in the District of Columbia region at the National Landing Amazon HQ2 offices early next year.
The 3,500-square-foot shop will be at Metropolitan Park, one of Amazon's National Landing Campus buildings on South Eads Street. Amazon announced in the spring it had finished construction of the top floor of Metropolitan Park. Office space will house 25,000 employees and feature retail establishments, restaurants, green spaces, parks, and walking and biking paths that are beginning to take shape.
The Conte's Metropolitan Park location will offer a full selection of bikes, accessories, and parts and will be operated by about 12 employees. Bike rentals likely will be offered once supply returns to a more normal level, according to a Conte's spokesperson.
"It's a natural progression of our presence in the D.C. metro area," owner David Conte told BRAIN. "With our existing footprint of seven stores in the Northern Virginia-Washington, D.C. metro, this new store in National Landing simply extends our ability to serve this dominant, Eastern Seaboard metro area. The National Landing area has been a 'bike desert.' Having stores in Arlington and Alexandria, Virginia, the Amazon HQ2 location facilitates our serving this entire southern ring area of D.C. and Northern Virginia."
The Conte's spokesperson said the new location will be operated similarly to the others and will feature a coffee bar, social area, and professional bike fitting room.
While sharing a physical location with the e-commerce giant, there are no plans to open an Amazon online store. "We are focused on our own e-comm presence," the spokesperson said.
David Conte said he had no reservations about partnering with Amazon. "Heck no. We are proud to stand with a company that directly employs 1.2 million people."
In addition to Conte's Bike Shop, three other small businesses will call Metropolitan Park home: fitness studio Hustle, restaurant Social Burger, and juice shop South Block.
Conte's Bike Shop, founded in 1957, is one of the biggest bike retailers in the U.S., currently with 15 locations, also in North Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. The chain was included in The Big BRAIN Ten: The biggest bike retailers in the US last year.
