By Lauren Otis, Staff Writer
Princeton’s compactness and charm have always made it a bicyclist’s type of town. And its interesting past intertwined with a slew of acclaimed residents and a dynamic contemporary arts and commercial community have always attracted visitors.
One woman now intends to combine the two.
Princeton Borough resident Mimi Omiecinski intends to start Princeton Bike Tours, a company which will lead locals and visitors alike on tours revealing both the well known and the unheralded in Princeton’s present and past.
Ms. Omiecinski moved here a year and a half ago from Florida with her son, Stosh, and husband, Steve, who took a job as director of marketing for Somerset-based Terumo Medical Group.
They moved into an apartment on the corner of Nassau and Witherspoon streets, above Hamilton Jewelers, Ms. Omiecinski said. Although she had never lived in the north before, Ms. Omiecinski, a native of Nashville, Tenn., who worked for 15 years in Atlanta in health care as an insurance executive before the birth of her son, now 7, said, “We have fallen hopelessly in love with this town.”
She wanted to form a business and “I really wanted to have something that celebrated the town,” Ms. Omiecinski said. “When my husband and I got the chance to travel the world, we would take these little bike tours, in Paris and Barcelona,” she said.
Thinking the bike tour concept would be a great fit for Princeton — “I literally woke up one morning and thought of it” — Ms. Omiecinski began a series of consultations with the Princeton chapter of SCORE, the free startup business consultants, and the idea for Princeton Bike Tours began to take shape.
Ms. Omiecinski said reaction to the idea in recent meetings with the Borough Merchants for Princeton, Princeton University and potential historical partners like Morven Museum has been overwhelmingly positive. Palmer Square Management and the Nassau Inn have donated a location to store the company’s initial 20 bicycles, including five tandems, according to Ms. Omiecinski. She said she hoped to begin small, offering her first tours perhaps as early as July, and grow based on interest level.
The first tours over the summer would take cyclists on a circuit of borough historical sites, and would accommodate those with their own bikes and those who needed to rent them. The two to two-and-a-half hour tours would be led initially by Princeton University students, but Ms. Omiecinski said she hoped to line up a full spectrum of “notable Princetonians” and university professors to offer “cameo tours.” She said she already had a commitment from the architect Maximillian Hayden to be the first cameo tour guide. “He’s going to be doing a tour about restored historical properties,” she said.
She was even trying to secure the services of Princeton Borough’s parking enforcement officers to give a tour on “unlocking the secrets to parking in Princeton,” Ms. Omiecinski said, adding with a big laugh “which I think might get us the most money.”
Tours will eventually encompass the full spectrum of Princeton’s diversity of history, commercial attractions and intellectual appeal, Ms. Omiecinski said. They would incorporate little-known facts about various borough merchants — who Ms. Omiecinski called “the uncelebrated heroes of this town” — as well as descriptions of Princeton’s historical role in the Underground Railroad, with stops at houses of celebrated residents like Toni Morrison and other notable residences such as “the house that inspired Richard Ford to write his Pulitzer Prize-winning books about the town.”
This summer, in conjunction with Morven Museum and other organizers of a celebration of the 225th anniversary of Princeton’s hosting of the 1783 Continental Congress, Ms. Omiecinski intends to create freestyle prerecorded tours enabling people to learn about that point in Princeton’s history, when it was the nation’s capital.
Ms. Omiecinski intends to collaborate with other Princeton institutions, including the Arts Council of Princeton, Historical Society of Princeton, Princeton Public Library and the university. The tours will be structured to be of interest both to first-time Princeton visitors and long-time residents, Ms. Omiecinski said.
”Maybe locals don’t know everything they should know about this town,” she said.
Ms. Omiecinski said she was excited about starting an enterprise that would promote cycling in Princeton and efforts by entities like Sustainable Princeton to encourage residents to get out of their cars and walk or bike around town more.
”I just think it’s a great time to launch a bike tour business here,” she said.
For more information on Princeton Bike Tours e-mail Ms. Omiecinski at [email protected].
