Editor's note: This story is part of Southwest Michigan's Second Wave's On the Ground Kalamazoo series.

KALAMAZOO, MI — Since 2009, when it formed out of its founder's garage, Open Roads has been serving youths ages 8 to 18 with programs helping them work on bikes and work on themselves.

The nonprofit has also been serving the unhoused population with donated and fixed-up bikes, refugees who need simple transportation, and parolees who can't get a license but need to get to work. 

"We run programs that the community needs, when the community needs them," Executive Director Isaac Green says. "We see ourselves as reactive and responsive."

Their growing mission as a non-profit bike shop has grown them out of their old space on Riverview Drive. They're hitting the road for the Edison Neighborhood, where they'll have a new, much larger space, the former KalBlue building on 914 E. Vine St.

Green says they're envisioning "Open Roads as a bicycle hub of Kalamazoo."

So, they need more room. Green and Program Manager Ian Smith showed us their old HQ, where cardboard boxes of bike parts are crammed into every space, the shop area where mechanics bump elbows, and the tiny retail space. 

Leaving Riverview will be "bittersweet," Green says. 

The building was originally part of an abandoned greenhouse complex, transformed into Riverview Launch ten years ago. Shared with the Kalamazoo County Land Bank, the area hosts a large wildflower garden, views of the Kalamazoo River, and the bike-handy Kalamazoo River Valley Trail.

But they often catch a long-lasting unpleasant whiff of the Graphics Packaging plant on the other side of the river.

There are few residents around, and few eyes on the neighborhood, so break-ins have been common. The latest was last fall. "They got tools, they got bikes, they got our cash register, they got our cargo bike," Green says. "I don't love this location anymore," he adds.

Still, there are cherished memories, memorabilia, and a growing family, some of whom are immortalized on memorabilia. It’ll all be moving to the new space, including Devin's pillow.

Asked about the standout stars of their bike program, they bring up Devin — "His face is on that pillow!" Green points, laughing, at a pillow with a youth's mugging face printed on it.

Kids have gone through the Earn-A-Bike program, stayed on as teen advisors and mechanics, and are now a part of the Open Roads team. 

Devin started when he was 14, and now 19, is Open Roads' head mechanics instructor.

We met another Open Roads mechanic, Atreyu Muha, who was helping with the move into the KalBlue building.

He's 17 and started in the Earn-A-Bike program at 15. He's from Westwood, where he rides around the quiet neighborhood with his family. He primarily loves mountain biking, but before Open Roads, "I didn't know anything about how a bike worked."

He learned the mechanics, but also about "working with kids. Working with customers (who come in during their Open Shop). It kind of teaches you the social skills that you would need in the real world, you know?"

Muha hopes to go to Michigan Tech to study engineering and maybe enter the nonprofit field. "I like working with nonprofits and helping people get what they need." 

To get real-world experience as a teen, "I guess I could get a job at, like, Walmart or Target or something," Muha says, sounding like that's the last thing he wants to do, when there are bikes to be fixed, plus bonuses like a recent Open Roads trip to the mountain bike trails of Boyne Highlands.


First bikes

Green and Smith remember their first bikes.

"When I was five, I rode a Mongoose Rock-A-Dile," Green says in a tone that means the coolest possible bike for a five-year-old is the Rock-A-Dile.

His family lived in the country, near Gobles. His father put him on the bike, no training wheels, put him on the dirt road, and aimed him down a hill. 

"I pushed down the hill, and I had my feet out because I wasn't putting them on the pedals. And I got to the very bottom of the lane there, and I grabbed both brakes and skidded to a stop. And then just leaned over. I think that was the first time I rode a bike without training wheels. I made it 60 feet."

Smith grew up in rural Indiana with a U-shaped driveway. "I spent just hours and hours, probably days total, riding my bike on that gravel driveway, crashing, skidding up my knees," he says.

His first time without training wheels, "my mom was holding me back up, keeping me going. And then I was riding, and I turned around and realized she wasn't there anymore. And it was like this crazy feeling. And I crashed. "

Riding on two wheels is the first time for many kids that they've performed a risky, seemingly impossible feat. As they improve, they reach that first realization that there's a freedom in riding wherever they want to go. Then, hopefully soon, they will understand the responsibilities that come with it.

Smith says, "For our program, that sense of freedom that kids get is the core of it all. Being able to move about independently and have that sense of being able to go somewhere at an accelerated rate.... I think that that sense of freedom is extremely valuable for kids, because... they can't drive. They don't have that ability to transport themselves. So if they have the bike, that affords them a real sense of autonomy. "

"I can do hard things."

It was fitting that bikes became the center of a program to help kids grow into adults. Founder and current board member Ethan Alexander says in an Open Roads promotional video that he thinks of the phrase, "I can do hard things."

"Bikes are hard. You take an old bike, and things are rusted and damaged, and seized-up," he says. When youth at Open Roads fix an old bike and make it rideable, they learn that "I can do hard things," he says.

They also learn Open Roads' "ROADS" rules: Respect, Own your actions, Attitude counts, Discipline, Safety. Their youth program is just as focused on social skills as it is on bikes. They learn how to work with others, peers, and adults. 

"A lot of kids come in when they're 14, and they're not really used to talking to people," Green says. They have friends, family, teachers, but Open Roads "puts them in the hot seat where, okay, you're going to be interacting with your fellow employees, kids your age that are interested in the same things."

He continues, "Confidence is the number one thing that I see kids that spend time in our program gain." It definitely builds confidence when they get to own and enjoy the result of their hard work. "A lot of the kids that are in our program, they really just want access to hands-on, do-it-yourself time, which schools don't give them access to a lot of the time anymore."

Smith says, "It is related to confidence, but it's more specifically the ability and the willingness to talk about things, and be open about things." Some kids are "an open book," others are quiet, "and they kind of slowly progress into being more open. And then by the last day, they're quite open with us about how they feel about things, and they're more comfortable — you can tell they're more comfortable talking," he says.

"And that's one thing that I always try to instill in the kids — like when we're talking about the social /emotional side of things, is that in almost any interaction you're going to have in your life, it's not as serious as you think it is. And you don't need to be nervous talking to adults or nervous talking to whoever. Just have confidence. It's all about having confidence. If you appear confident, people are going to believe that you're confident."

Some go through their apprenticeship program and become teen mechanics for their regular Open Shop fixes, where kids can get bikes fixed for free, and adults who can pay can do so as well for a small donation.

Unlike at a regular bike shop, their mechanics will teach kids how to fix a bike as they fix it. When it's a teen teaching a ten-year-old, Smith says, "It's just great to see that happen. And then when you see the kid riding away with a big smile on his face after he gets his bike fixed, it's a really kind of magical thing to see."

Green adds, "Then adults come in, right? And then we'll have our teenage apprentices work with an adult who doesn't know as much about bike mechanics as them. So it kind of flips the script, and now this 40-year-old adult is learning from one of our 16-year-old mechanics. And they're the content expert in this moment, which I think is really empowering."


The big move

The price of the KalBlue building "was very reasonable," Green says. "So, we were able to secure a loan from the Kalamazoo Community Foundation Impact Investment Team. And essentially, we were able to close on that building in January of this year. "

Late spring-early summer is prime bike season, Green and Smith say. Unfortunately, they'll have to pause some of their activities for the move, though there will be public bike-fix events at branches of the Kalamazoo Public Library through June.

They'll try to be out of the Riverview building by June 1, and "ultimately, ideally we would have programs running by July at our new space," Green says.

Second Wave was invited into the new space in early April. At that time, there was a lot of emptiness, but Green and a crew of mostly teen workers were installing new work benches and shelves. 

One of the bonuses of getting the KalBlue building is that the walls have a lot of professionally designed slick graphics.

Maybe they could put a bike on the large hemisphere of North America stuck on the lobby wall?

Green says he might try to pry the map off and put it on the wall of their new classroom, but he fears he might break it.

More exciting is that they will have a full-sized, "actual classroom, so kids can sit down and learn without standing right next to their bike.... a dedicated learning space versus working space," Green says.

They'll have around four times the space than at Riverview, he estimates. He takes us on a tour to show off two offices, a conference room, a much larger retail space, a full kitchenette, event space, and enough workshop space for both Earn-A-Bike kids and anyone who rolls a clunker in. 

"I anticipate it to be a very, very fruitful place once it's up and running," Green says.

Also exciting, he says, is that the location is in the center of Kalamazoo's densely populated Edison Neighborhood. 

Smith says, "So many people live in the Edison neighborhood. We'll be close to Vine. We're close to Edison. We're close to downtown. You could walk to us, easily take the bus, easily bike to us. Whereas (on Riverview), obviously, we have the trail, but getting across downtown for a lot of people is tricky."

“Bikes give agency”

Also getting his first look at what'll be the new Open Roads was John Safapour, who'd just brought in a minivan full of donated goods to the new space.

He says he's a volunteer with the Interfaith Refugee Resettlement Group, helping local refugees from Afghanistan get acclimated to Kalamazoo.

Open Roads has "done amazing work," he says. "They've probably given out about 500 bikes to refugees.... bikes, equipment, locks, lessons. It's amazing."

A new refugee can't get a driver's license quickly, and often, especially in the case of Afghan women, have never learned to drive. Many had never learned to ride a bike, he says.

Because of Open Roads' work, "their first sense of agency before they got driver's licenses was having a bike," Safapour says. "The first time I saw smiles on them, actually, was once they got a bike." 

Safapour points out that Open Roads donates and fixes bikes for Dignity in Motion, a local group helping unhoused people get their own basic transportation. 

"And also parolees!" he adds. Ex-cons out of prison, needing to get to work but often not able to afford to or legally able to drive, have gotten bikes from Open Roads. "You guys are integral, basically, to reducing recidivism," Safapour tells the modestly smiling Green. "A very simple, practical, logistical issue, they solved."

It's a simple, obvious concept, he says. From kids to people who need a simple vehicle, "The bikes give agency to people," Safapour says.