Lance Armstrong has announced plans to open an 18,000 square foot facility in downtown Austin to help encourage the cycling life and weave bicycling more deeply into the city's fabric.

"This city is exploding downtown. Are all these people in high rises going to drive everywhere?" Lance said to a reporter from the Austin American-Statesman. "We have to promote (bike) commuting. This can be a hub for that."

In addition to the features of a full-service bike shop -- new bike sales, on-site bike service plus lines of bike equipment and accessories -- the facility will also offer showers and lockers for bike commuters who work downtown, a cafe and a training facility run by Chris Carmichael, Lance's personal coach.

"There's a bigger ambition we're going to go for here. It's not like there's not a good bike shop in town. We want to add something to the community that will catalyze interest around riding bikes, about being bike friendly and folding it into life in Austin," Armstrong's partner in the project Bart Knaggs told the Austin American-Statesman.

The 1950s-era building, which has served as a distribution site for Pearl beer, a steel manufacturing plant and most recently as a resource center for the homeless, sits at the northwest corner of Fourth and Nueces streets in downtown Austin.

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