Steve Cahalan: Owl City Cycles opens in downtown Houston, Minnesota as full-service bicycle shop (2024)

Derek and Brittany Wallace have opened Owl City Cycles, a full-service bicycle shop, at 111 E. Cedar St., next to the Mileage gas station in downtown Houston, Minn.

The new business opened May 3 and offers bicycle sales and service, as well as both sales and rentals of electric bicycles, kid trailers, trailers for small pets, and tag-a-longs for kids to ride. It also sells custom Owl City Cycles T-shirts, jerseys, hats and water bottles, as well as such things as shorts, sunglasses, helmets, bike lights, bags, snacks, beverages and roasted coffee from the nearby Carlson Roasting Co.

The Wallaces said it’s the only bike shop in Houston County and is near the Root River State Trail.

Hours are 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday; 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday and closed Tuesday and Wednesday. The business will be seasonal, Derek said. “We haven’t decided for sure, but we might open for the season in April or possibly the first week in May,” he said. “And I imagine we’ll close by the first of November.”

“It’s been really good,” Derek said of the amount of business the shop has had so far. “The community has been welcoming. We’ve done a lot of service work for locals. We’ve heard from countless people the excitement of ‘Now we don’t have to haul our bikes all the way to La Crosse or Winona to get work done on them.’ ”

The Wallaces live south of New Albin, Iowa, and have three children and other jobs. Derek is a contractor with FedEx Ground and Brittany is a nurse at Gundersen Health System in La Crosse.

The couple chose Houston for their business because they have relatives in the area, the community is on the Root River State Trail and they enjoy the area’s beauty. They bought the building, which had been vacant for several years, last fall and remodeled it into a bicycle shop.

“I decided to turn a hobby (bicycling) into a career of sorts,” said Derek, who has participated in many bicycle races and other events. “Brittany is certainly the person who supports me in all of this.”

For more information, call the store at 507-896-2100 or visit www.owlcitycycles.com or Facebook.

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A ribbon-cutting ceremony was held Wednesday at AFG Wealth Management‘s new office in Suite 102 at 2511 E. Main St. in Onalaska. The office opened in November.

The wealth management business serves individuals, families and businesses, said Todd Anderson, founder and managing partner of the firm, which began in 1992 in Black River Falls. It now has offices in Black River Falls, the U.S. Bank building in La Crosse and Onalaska. Mike Mashak, senior partner, has been in the La Crosse location for 13 years.

“The firm offers a variety of private wealth management and planning services to individuals/families such as, financial and retirement planning, asset management, estate planning, risk management and insurance planning,” Anderson said. “We also provide business wealth management strategies such as succession planning, executive benefit plans, qualified retirement plans and corporate risk management. Our team of professionals looks forward to continuing to provide private and wealth management services to the area.”

Hours at the new Onalaska office are 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Friday and closed Saturday and Sunday. For more information, call 715-446-4500 or visit www.afgwealth.net or the firm’s Facebook page.

The former Holiday gas station/convenience store at 17544 N. Main St. in Galesville that closed last September has reopened as a Marathon gas station/convenience store.

The convenience store opened June 1. Before that, customers had been able to buy Marathon gasoline at the pumps on a card-only basis since May 15.

The Galesville Holiday station was one of 13 Mega Co-op convenience stores that closed in early September, after the co-op’s Sept. 1 announcement that it had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The Eau Claire-based co-op said in its announcement that it had been operating 31 locations in the area. It said it would close 13 stores, and scale back to 18 locations.

A new corporation, Galesville Store, LLC, is now operating the Galesville gas station/convenience store. The corporation was created earlier this year and is headed by Navdeep Chib of Baldwin, Wis., which operates some other gas station/convenience stores.

The Galesville convenience store sells a variety of food items, candy, snacks, tobacco and vape products, beer, soda pop, other beverages and lottery tickets. Store hours are 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. seven days a week.