The Zidell Yards are for the wrecker’s ball. That much is certain. The Oregon state legislature in June approved a loan of up to $800 million in funding for a new 32,000-seat Major League Baseball stadium in Portland’s urban renewal South Waterfront neighborhood. It’s happening.

The Portland Diamond Project has purchased those 33 unredeveloped acres as the site for the ballpark, to be flanked by retail, hotel, and residential developments. Work is scheduled to start in 2027. This puts a rather large question mark over the future of the Made show at this location. A quick look at the PDP website indicates no interest in an exhibition hall. 

It's a developer's dream. Photo: Google Maps

Sweltering temperatures when it’s warm outside, and chilly inside when it rains. Pigeon poop drops from the rafters, and the sanitary facilities extend about as far as plastic porta potties which quietly stink in the noonday sun. That’s what show-goers have come to accept about the former barge-building shed at Zidell Yards since the debut of the Made show in 2023. Portland’s cycling community will take this if they get an annual custom bike show. 

A custom bike show in Portland is a safe bet to draw a good crowd

The main things going for Zidell Yards from the attendees perspective are the near-downtown location and it’s on both the A and B Max light rail lines. The problem is, from the property developer’s perspective Zidell Yards has a heck of a lot more going for it than that. This is the last large undeveloped parcel in central Portland.

Located a short mile from Downtown, the South Waterfront has undergone remarkable change in the past few years, with the development of high-rise condos, an aerial tram, streetcars, and a rapidly expanding medical university, OHSU. What once was a clunky industrial riverfrontage is now increasingly composed of sleek residential and medical high rises that are well connected to all areas of Portland.

Ever get the feeling you're about to be swallowed whole by hi-rise development?

Industry veterans have seen all this upheaval before, even benefited from it sometimes. What is known to the old school is bike shows come and go, and this has never prevented frame builders from continuing to produce exquisite bicycles that ride like a dream. That said, everybody loves a bike show.

There was a long period of darkness in the custom bikes landscape prior to NAHBS. Frame builders would occasionally show up at the big events like Interbike and Eurobike, but the majority were almost invisible amid the promotional din of the mass market. One custom bikes show, in Tokyo, predates NAHBS, but with limited promotion it was almost unknown even in Japan.

When NAHBS came along in 2005, a global fire started that 20 years later still burns with a resilient economic energy unique to a lifestyle business community that isn’t in it solely for the money. Now, in 2025, a glance at the handbuilt custom bike show calendar reveals several shows around the world, ranging in size from a handful of small scale manufacturers up to 150 or more.

 Peak Bike Show: NAHBS PDX got so crowded the fire marshall had to meter admission

Most enduring of these shows is the Philly Bike Expo, which started in 2010 and allows mass producers alongside the custom builders into its fabulous downtown Philadelphia show hall, but lets nobody dominate. The Philly show is among the most accessible portals to the kaleidoscopic panoply of bicycling in the USA. It is simultaneously energetic, fun, warm and fuzzy, and includes a family aspect that introduces toddlers to this wonderful world.

 You won't see this at many bike shows on this planet. Photo: PBE/Firespire Photography

In Europe the Bespoked show, now led by the UK artist Petor Georgallou, has what Rory Hitchens, a UK bicycle consultant and HBG contributor, describes as “infectious energy.” Post-Brexit, the UK base of Bespoked is showing a few cracks, but Georgallou found a superior alternative on a mezzanine floor in the lightly-used Dresden Airport and rents a big van to help the British builders get there.

Photo & Video Rory Hitchens/Greenleaves Cycling (click image for video)

The city of Portland, Oregon, although something of an outpost in the USA's Pacific Northwest, has played a key role this century in the custom handbuilt bikes industry. Just 300 miles (480km) south of the Canadian border, and a cool 1000 miles (1600km) north of Los Angeles. Portland’s closest city is Seattle, Washington, 170 miles (270km). These two small cities have a combined population under 1.5 million. 

Historically Portland has been a center of logging and shipping, then a hub of heavy industry during WWII, and now is a leader in the US tech and sports industries. Yet this remote pocket of the USA has been a significant driver of the handbuilt custom bikes industry. Back in 2008, after a solid primer the year prior in San Jose, California, the Portland NAHBS threw kerosene on a smouldering fire, attracting global celebrities Robin Williams and Lance Armstrong.

When it was announced at the end of that historic 2008 event that the following year NAHBS would be in Indianapolis there were literally howls of anguish among the assembled show goers who were convinced Portland was the one and only place. Between then and Made’s first appearance in 2023, efforts were made periodically to start a regional show, but nothing stuck.

One of the things that has made Zidell Yards appealing to exhibitors is the relatively low booth prices: $600 in the periphery and $1000 in the center. This is especially so for non-local exhibitors faced with substantial costs for transport and lodging.

 Exhibitors like the booth prices at Made

The cycling populations of Portland and Seattle clearly want a custom bike show, but the question looming on the horizon is where it will be. This year the Made organizers claimed a record attendance, but will public access be so easy in the future?

It’s highly unlikely Made will find another venue offering such low prices in a central location with such easy access. Back in the day, the City of Portland offered NAHBS $75,000 to charge only $5 for a day pass (NAHBS declined). Such an offer today would pave the way for Made into a more secure future, but those tailwinds of the Oughties aren’t blowing so much in the direction of cycling anymore.

The question seems to be not if Made will have to leave Zidell Yards, but when. The plans to break ground are in place, and all that’s needed now is a team franchise willing to pay back the $800 million to the state of Oregon.

Once that happens, according to sources in the Made organization, the show will be given 60 days notice of contract termination. But the many questions notwithstanding this need not mean that Portland will lose its beloved bike show. As Petor Georgallou has shown with Bespoked: bike shows, like pop music stars, are quite capable of reinventing themselves.

All photos HBG unless otherwise credited.