Kayak Store Planned for Rogers Park

by Bryce Wolfe
July 23, 2088 – The Geneva Kayak Center , located on the Fox River, plans to open a new store on Sheridan Road in Rogers Park. Originally slated to open in May, a required zoning change slowed its progress. Construction may begin when its business license becomes official at the end of July, according to 49th Ward staff assistant Michael Land.

“We’re just trying to cross the t’s and dot the i’s,” said an employee at the Geneva Kayak Center. He said the new store would offer the same services as the flagship store, including training courses, rentals, tours and adventure trips in addition to selling kayaks and accessories. The store will occupy the ground unit at 7301 N. Sheridan Road, between an Internet café and a small grocery store.

Elliot Morgan, 19, lives in Rogers Park and has been kayaking for several years. She said she would be thrilled to see the store open because of its location. Typically, she says she has to travel north to Skokie or Evanston or south to the University of Chicago to take lessons.

“It will bring a very good business to our community,” Ald. Joe Moore (49th) told members of the Chicago City Council Committee on Zoning, which approved changes needed to open the store.

The Chicago area has a number of businesses that cater to kayakers, from clubs to rental shacks to classes.

The Chicago Kayak Club, founded in 2002, began as a no-name collective of friends and has grown to over 300 members, ages 8 to 76. Women make up more than 60 percent of the club, said founder Cynthia Gilbert, who also founded an all-women organization of kayakers called Miss Guided Adventures .

“I realized that allowing people to get out on the water was the only real way to escape the crowds in this busy city,” said Gilbert. “The idea was to give people who lived in the city an inexpensive and easy way to access the local waterways around Chicago.”

“Urban kayaking through the architectural canyons of the Chicago River is by far the best way to see the city,” said Dave Olsen, owner of Kayak Chicago and former Columbia College student. “We have had people kayak to work or even to other states via the river.”

Olsen says the best thing about kayaking is that anyone can do it. Kayak Chicago has the largest adaptive kayaking program in the Midwest, he said, which teaches children and adults with physical and mental disabilities how to kayak.

According to its Web site, the Geneva Kayak Center is proud to be the only BCU endorsed coaching center in the Midwest, as well as an ACA Pro School , and it offers a range of instruction from beginning to advanced courses.