The Maryland Cycling Classic is back in Baltimore on Saturday, but some local businesses are not happy with the return of the international event.

The roughly 18-mile course — ringing some of the city’s most popular shopping corridors — will be shut down with rolling closures, adding to traffic jams from other events and choking off vital parking spots.

The scale of the event is so impactful that business owners across the city are closing their stores and canceling events.

Chris Anderson, owner of Vogue Revisted, a women’s consignment store on Roland Avenue, said the event is creating a “nightmare.” She’s joining other businesses that plan to close on what’s typically their busiest day of the week.

Steve Brunner, executive director of the Maryland Cycling Classic, said the hope for the event is “to drive commerce, not take it away.”

The course, which was announced in July, stretched into Baltimore County in prior years but became solely a city route due to logistical hurdles.

Cyclists from 30 countries will start their 72- to 107-mile treks in Harbor East and move through Fells Point, Canton, Patterson Park, Butchers Hill, Mount Vernon and Hampden, before heading north through Roland Park, then back to the finish line on Pratt Street downtown.

The women’s race begins at 8:30 a.m., and the men’s race will end by around 5 p.m.

Residents and business patrons won’t be able to park along the course in several parts of the city for about 24 hours starting at 8 p.m. Friday.

Some businesses have been more welcoming than others.

“Next Saturday, the Maryland Cycling Classic is back and comes through our neighborhood!” Atomic Books in Hampden posted on Facebook last week. “There’s no parking on Falls and parts of Roland, but you can mostly drive on them. They’ll only be closed off when the cyclists come through. Grab a seat @nepenthebrewingco and cheer for the cyclists!”

Still, Benn Ray, the bookstore’s co-owner, said on his own social media page that, although he likes the race and sees it as fun, “the changes they made this year (again without community consultation) create a hardship for hundreds of small independent businesses.”

BMore Flea Market, the weekly weekend vintage and craft market run by Patrick Horvat, announced on social media that it was canceling its Saturday event at Broadway Market.

“We’re not bike race haters, but we just can’t make it happen,” the post reads. “We spent a lot of time trying to figure something out but no luck. Sorry y’all.”

Johns Hopkins Peabody Preparatory’s downtown campus, on Charles Street and East Mount Vernon Place, will be closed “as the event will cause significant road closures and make access to campus extremely difficult,” the institution said in an email Wednesday to families.

Nearly 1,000 people visit the community school for the performing arts in Mount Vernon on Saturdays, the email reads.

The owner of Mercury Theater, which runs a monthly market on Charles Street in Station North, shared strong feelings about the event on social media.

“The September Mercury Mart this weekend is cancelled because someone thinks it’s acceptable to shut down an entire city for entitled people,” the post reads.

The owners of Wishbone Reserve and Shredded Vintage on Falls Road in Hampden said those stores will be closed.

“We are one of many businesses being financially impacted this Saturday by the @marylandcyclingclassic,” they shared in a joint post on Instagram on Thursday. “Events like these do not drive business to the neighborhood.”

Brunner, the race director, said he’s seen large turnouts for cycling events in other cities, including Richmond, Virginia, and Philadelphia. He said his hope is that the expected 100,000 people who will attend the Maryland Cycling Classic will have a positive impact on local businesses.

“The event will be seen in over 80 countries, and I think those sights and sounds of the streets of Baltimore can only be done through a cycling race like this,” he said. “So there’s a positive, residual benefit that probably won’t be recognized until post-event.”

Vogue Revisited’s Anderson and others told The Banner that short notice about the race course has made the day especially difficult to deal with.

Anderson said she found out about the event Tuesday.

Burke Seim, owner of Service Photo on Falls Road in Hampden, said his staff was informed last weekend when a group representing the cycling event dropped off flyers.

Mercury Theater’s social media post put it bluntly: “The city does not give a heads-up to local businesses and provides no feasible workarounds, making shit incredibly difficult for residents, businesses, workers, and people with disabilities.”

Brunner argued that the Maryland Cycling Classic tried to inform the community, posting on social media about the event more than a month ago, holding a press conference in July and door-knocking over the past two weeks.

“No parking” signs were placed along the impacted route two weeks before the event, according to Linzy Jackson, director of the Mayor’s Office of Arts, Culture, and Entertainment.

“Our teams make rounds every couple of days to replace the ones that were removed by residents or for other reasons,” Jackson said in an email.

This is the third iteration of the Maryland Cycling Classic, which has had scheduling issues in the past. The sporting event was postponed last year partly due to the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge that March.

Velo, a cycling media outlet, reported last year that the event’s route didn’t use the bridge but the change in traffic patterns played a part in the decision.

It also was postponed in 2020, which was supposed to be the inaugural year, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It officially launched in 2022.

The Maryland Cycling Classic will “100%” try to do better promotion and notification in the future, Brunner said.