Tommy Creal
rolled into town two years ago on a custom-built chopper with a full tank of ambition.
This fall, the young entrepreneur is retooling his business in hopes of finding the right gear.
As a teenager, Creal started a popular bike-building bootcamp in Chicago. After moving to Minneapolis in 2008, Creal decided to relaunch
Chopper College as a "green" technical institute.
Creal's Chopper College partnered with Minneapolis Community & Technical College on a catalog of 40 courses last year aimed at gearheads interested in building alternative-fuel motorcycles.
The demand wasn't what he hoped for, so this fall he's scaled back to two one-weekend workshops that will teach participants how to build a bike that runs on E85 ethanol.
Creal's E85 bike-building workshops will be open to 48 students each. Over the course of three days (Oct. 8-10 or Nov. 12-14) students will help build a pair of motorcycles from scratch.
Meanwhile, Creal is keeping busy on the side by building custom choppers for local organizations, from the Minnesota Wild to Life Science Alley.
If the workshops suggest there's interest in ethanol-powered choppers, Creal says the next phase for Chopper College will be developing a gasoline-to-ethanol conversion kit to sell.
The lower than expected enrollment for last year's classes hasn't soured Creal on the Twin Cities. Instead he says he's struck by how much support there is for businesses here.
"People are lending hands everywhere, opening doors for us, and I'm just trying to figure out how to give back, because everybody's been giving to us," says Creal. "You can trust me on this: it's not like Chicago where everybody's out for themselves."
Source: Tommy Creal, Chopper College
Writer:
Dan Haugen