Wheel & Sprocket opens first Milwaukee store
Old Bay View building converted into bike shop
Wheel & Sprocket President Noel Kegel’s plans to buy a Bay View building and convert it into his bicycle company’s headquarters hit a road block.
The building owner had spurned his purchase offer, which met the listed sale price, in favor of a higher-priced competing bid.
But when Kegel looked just a block west from where his plans had been rejected, he saw what would become his company’s first Milwaukee store.
Over three years later, Wheel & Sprocket has opened its latest bicycle and biking gear shop at 187 E. Becher St.
The project converted a 101-year-old industrial building into a store that includes a cafe, along with the company’s new headquarters relocated from Hales Corners.
The building also rents space to two nonprofit groups tied to biking: Wisconsin Bike Fed and Rails to Trails Conservancy.
It was a challenging development that forced Wheel & Sprocket to make a quick purchase — followed by an extensive environmental cleanup and transformation of the building.
“A developer looking at this project would pass on it,” Kegel said.
“We really just cared, and wanted to make it our home,” he said.
Wheel & Sprocket was launched in Hales Corners in 1973. Noel Kegel’s father, Chris Kegel, started at the shop that year as a bicycle mechanic.
By 1989, he had become president and owner, and eventually grew Wheel & Sprocket into a nationally known dealer. It operates stores in Appleton, Brookfield, Delafield, Fox Point, Franklin, Middleton and Oshkosh, as well as the Chicago suburbs of Evanston and Oak Park, Illinois.
Chris Kegel died in 2017 from cancer at the age of 63.
By then, the Kegel family had been looking since 2012 for a Wheel & Sprocket location in or near downtown Milwaukee.
Noel and his sisters, Amelia, Wheel & Sprocket vice president, and Tessa, creative director, were all living in Milwaukee and had seen their fellow millennials moving to urban neighborhoods.
They reviewed 30 to 40 properties, and came close on two locations.
One was a former warehouse, at 209 S. Water St., that was instead converted into offices for Plunkett Raysich Architects LLP.
The other was an industrial building at 300 E. Bay St., just east of South Kinnickinnic Avenue.
That’s where Noel Kegel saw what would become his company’s future home after the Bay Street property owner turned down his purchase offer.
The Becher Street building had a “for sale” sign. And the owner was eager to unload the property after a previous deal with another bidder fell through.
The purchase offer was accepted, but the sale had to be completed within 30 days — an unusually quick turnaround for an older industrial property.
That closing period didn’t give the Kegels enough time for a more extensive inspection of the property’s physical condition, or a deeper study of its possible environmental issues.
But the 10,800-square-foot building, featuring a high ceiling, could have its space doubled by adding a floor to create two levels — with room for an addition.
That would give Wheel & Sprocket 25,000 square feet just one block west of heavily traveled Kinnickinnic Avenue. That compared to less than 10,000 square feet at the Bay Street building.
The Kegels pulled the trigger, and in November 2017 bought the property for $695,000, according to state real estate records.
“We just took a leap of faith,” Noel Kegel said.
They found environmental cleanup costs that were significantly higher than expected.
Close to $100,000 was spent — mainly for 100 dump truck loads of contaminated soil that was carted to a landfill.
Also, as the building’s 1960s-era metal cladding was removed, much of the original brick structure was found to be in poor shape.
“You could literally poke your finger through the brick,” Kegel said.
The property’s environmental cleanup and preparation work took until spring 2019 to complete. That’s when the renovations began in earnest, with Project 4 Services hired as general contractor and Russell LaFrombois serving as architect.
New siding was installed, along with floor-to-ceiling windows. The deck created two levels, with a small addition also constructed. And updated heating, plumbing and electrical systems were built.
But the building kept some of its original industrial touches, including the steel roof trusses and an overhead crane.
“We wanted to preserve the character,” Kegel said.
The building was initially used as a foundry shop by Filer and Stowell Co., as part of its larger complex for manufacturing logging and sawmill equipment, and other industrial products.
Most of the former Filer and Stowell complex is west of the Wheel & Sprocket store, with railroad tracks separating the two sites.
Those other former Filer and Stowell buildings, 123 and 147 E. Becher St., are to be converted into 311 apartments, including around 200 affordable units. Kenosha-based Bear Development LLC hopes to secure project financing by December 2021.
That’s just one of several new developments that have been built, or are in the development pipeline, within a few blocks of the new Wheel & Sprocket.
River 1, a mixed-use development, is under construction west of South First Street and north of West Becher Street overlooking the Kinnickinnic River.
It features an eight-story, 200,000square-foot office building, anchored by Michels Corp., that begins opening this month, and a four-story, 95-unit apartment building, with a ground-floor restaurant, to be finished by June.
Other newer nearby apartment buildings include the 291-unit Stichweld, 2141 S. Robinson Ave., and 69-unit Vue, 2200 S. Kinnickinnic Ave., both completed in 2017, and the 144-unit Kinetik, 2130 S. Kinnickinnic Ave., which opened in May.
Those developments together are bringing several hundred potential customers to Wheel & Sprocket’s neighborhood.
And that comes as bike shops see big sales increases nationwide — fueled by more people doing socially distanced outdoor activities during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Wheel & Sprocket’s Bay View store has about 75% of its expected inventory because bicycle makers are behind on filling orders, Kegel said.
The new store also has an unusual feature: the Joy Ride Cafe, which features pizza, baked goods, coffee and beer.
“Beer, coffee and bikes,” Tessa Kegel said.
“The Holy Trinity,” added Noel Kegel. The counter service cafe’s operations were created with the help of their brother, Julian, who operates another family business: Kegel’s Inn, a longtime German restaurant at 5901 W. National Ave., West Allis.
The Joy Ride Cafe’s proceeds benefit the Chris Kegel Foundation, which provides grants for improvements to the Oak Leaf Trail and other bike trails. A second Joy Ride Cafe is to open this winter at the Fox Point store, 6940 N. Santa Monica Blvd.
Also, the new Bike Fed offices, which relocated from 3618 W. Pierce St., is more accessible to its members, new riders and the general public, said Kirsten Finn, executive director.
“This inviting space has the potential to be a true gathering space for the cycling community,” Finn said.
“Wheel & Sprocket brings great bikes, services and a community space to our neighborhood that will be highly utilized by many,” said Ald. Marina Dimitrijevic, whose district includes Bay View.
Still, while the pandemic has led to more interest in biking, the Kegels long for a return to a time when their customers feel more comfortable lingering at their new location, and the other stores.
“We know we have all these new people riding bikes,” Amelia Kegel said.