Bikeway Bicycle Closing Beacon store - A History of Leases - And Closer Look At 426 Main Street’s Landlord And Manager
/
Bikeway Bicycles & Mobility at 430 Main Street is closing its Beacon location, but remaining open in their 4 other busy and established locations in Wappingers Falls, Middletown, Montgomery, and Mahopac.
While this is a simple story of a bike shop not being able to carry the weight of what Beacon’s market claims to be able to bear, it is a larger story of the end of an era for a location that has been a bike shop for over 10 years. It is also the story of a property of which is part of neighboring storefronts and apartments that are suffering under a landlord and manager in order to keep their leases without experiencing threats of eviction, indecencies, and at least one family of raccoons that have also taken up occupancy. Under this rock, there are a lot of potato bugs.
Several residential tenants are connected to 426 Main Street who live in SRO apartments above, as well as commercial tenants on the ground floor, and a hotel room and rental business in some renovated apartments above that goes by The Beacon Hotel, which rents short and long term. One of it’s taglines is: “Not the usual hotel...Because its not really a hotel. Find out for yourself.”
The building owner, Beacon Main Real Estate Group LLC of Greg Trautman is currently being sued by at least one of the tenants living in an SRO apartment for not providing heat for a number of years, and has complaints from other tenants who also have not had heat.
There are reportedly raccoons nesting in one of the commercial spaces, ALBB has been told by multiple sources. It is unknown at this time if more raccoons or other animals are nesting in the residential apartments above 426 Main Street.
The 2017 Building Renovation Of The Beacon Hotel
Developers came in to renovate the left half of the building with the two towers, which opened in January 2017, and A Little Beacon Blog covered here. They kept the SRO units on the right side in the white part of the building. One of the original owners of that renovation was Greg Trautman, who had moved to Beacon from Brooklyn during this renovation process.
They opened a restaurant at the time, where famed and remembered Matt Hutchins, who has since passed, was touted as head chef. Since the shifting of property owners in the original investment group, the restaurant that is there now, Carter’s owned by chef Jon Lombardi, is different and not associated in any way with the building owner or property manager, aside from paying them rent of $9,400/month, as confirmed to ALBB by Carter’s owner, and goes up at least 4% in February, as it does every year as per their lease.
Of the original group of investors, Greg remains one of the original owners, and has since moved out of Beacon but remains hands on. The property is managed John Yarborough, who may also go by John Williams, who is a registered sexual offender on New York’s Sex Offender Registry under the name John Yarborough, and is listed as also living at 426 Main Street. Former female residents have told ALBB that Manager John Yarborough (Williams) has allegedly gone into their apartment rooms uninvited, and have alerted the Beacon Police to some instances, but police action is not taken, the former residents say.
Screenshot of the removed listing of 426 Main Street, The Beacon Hotel. The property includes the towers on the left, and the white apartments on the right.
The building was listed for sale this year in 2025 for around $4 million, but was removed according to LoopNet. According to the realtor Daniel Aubry who was aligned during the 2017 renovation, owner Greg is open to a sale, which Daniel thinks can go for $5 million because Manager John has been successfully collecting a high rent from the hotel rentals above.
Starting With The First Bike Shop In This Spot:
People’s Bicycle
Before that renovation, the original bike shop in this spot was set up by Jonathan Miles. There are several Johns on this block, so we will try to identify them as best we can so as not mix them up.
According to Realtor Daniel, Jonathan Miles built out the bike shop space from nothing to make People’s Bicycle in exchange for a $1/month rent with the owner at that time (prior to Greg). For people who like Beacon Trivia, Jonathan Miles was with a wave of people who were renovating old or empty shops on Main Street, and was involved in climate issues in the community.
This put him in the time of School of Jellyfish (of the sustainable architect Lily Zand, which had a hot chocolate studio in the building now owned by Luxe Optique), Zero2Go by Sara Womer (the original food composting company in Beacon which changed hands and was absorbed into Community Compost, which currently services the City of Beacon’s free compost program) Bikeable Beacon by Mark Roland (one of the early prolific bloggers in Beacon), and others. On the other end of town, another bike shop was open, run by Tom Cerchiara, who also owned the land surveying company, TEC.
Jonathan Miles then sold People’s Bicycle to Tim, who paid Jonathan rent for the space, while Jonathan held onto the original lease.
When Bikeway Took Over People’s Bicycle
While People’s Bicycle had a loyal following, Tim had a hard time earning enough income to survive on it. Winters were deadly dead. It could not survive on bike rentals alone, despite offering bike repairs with a selection of high end bikes to purchase. Jonathan wanted to keep it a bike shop, so they approached Doug at Bikeway to take it over, which he did. Tim went on to work for Doug in another Bikeway location. Doug continued paying Jonathan Miles the rent of $3,000/month until the end of their lease.
Once their lease finished, the building owner Greg approached Doug to propose that Doug pre-pay him a one year lump sum for a discounted rate. Doug agreed, he told ALBB, and paid Greg less than $3,000/month for the past year.
This Year, Bikeway Moves Out - Another Tenant May Move In
In the lease negotiation for a potential renewal, Manager John Yarborough of the current owner Greg Trautman approached Bikeway’s Doug to ask what rent amount Doug would like to pay Greg’s company Beacon Main Real Estate Group LLC. As a bike shop approaching winter, Doug could not go much higher than what he had just paid, so Manager John Yarborough moved on and did not renew the lease.
The Bike Market In Beacon
Doug and Tracy would like to find another location in Beacon. They have two thriving locations 15 minutes away from Beacon, where they employ multiple mechanics to service at least 4 bikes at a time, and have more bike inventory on the floor for people to buy that day.
ALBB asked Doug why he thought the bike shop on Main Street didn’t thrive in Beacon. He responded: “Beacon has a good bike culture, but it is still small. Tourism is not good for bike shops. People have their bikes already and get them serviced where they live. For locals, people in Beacon tend to keep their bikes and have older bikes. For new bike purchases, if someone came into our shop in Beacon, we would have to call one of our other stores for the color bike they wanted to buy.”
The shop in Beacon is small, did not require much upkeep from the building owners that Doug could not fix himself. This enabled Doug and Tracy to keep to themselves within the family of commercial spaces within the property. “We have our own entrance, our own key, our own security. No one can come in but Tracy and myself.”
Doug can see how another business would see the space, find it charming, and give their business a go. “We wish whoever comes in next the best.”
While their farewell letter states that their last day will be the end of the year, the building management has informed them that this Friday will be their last day. Says Bikeway’s Beacon farewell letter: “We love this town and the community, and the cycling culture that continues to flourish. Thanks to all of you who are making that happen - it’s awesome!”
In addition to their 4 other stores, Bikeway offers a Mobile Option. “The Big Yellow Van will be in Beacon 3 times a week for pickup and drop-off, saving you a trip and getting your bike back in 2-3 days. Call Wappingers at 845-463-7433 or email info@bikeway.com to schedule.”
Nothing could beat biking down to Bikeway for a quick and professional air re-fill of the tires when a home bike pump or air compressor just couldn’t do it. There is Beacon Bikes on Fishkill Avenue/Rte 52, but with the City of Beacon’s current reluctance to have a Bike Study to improve bike safety city-wide, biking down to Beacon’s other bike shop is a little further down on a busy road.
