PORT ANGELES — Country Aire Natural Foods co-owner Robyn Miletich sits in her tiny office above First Street biting her nails in jest.
This ebullient North Olympic Peninsula native is doing her best to lay the groundwork for expanding her narrow, cramped downtown 117 E. First St. health food store’s country-downtown ambiance to the old Gottschalks building at First and Oak streets — a venue more than five times larger than her present digs — by May 1.
The task of moving to the more than 17,000-square-foot 200 W. First St. site that she and her husband, John, bought July 1 for $650,000 from the K.O. Erickson Charity Trust is so gargantuan that she’s moved the “soft opening” date back a month.
Instead of April 1, it will be May 1, she said last week.
“It really is overwhelming,” she said earlier this month while standing at the doorway to the building, gazing at the largely empty space before her while John, perched on a mechanical lift, painted walls near the ceiling.
“We are going to fill it up,” she vowed.
The store will close April 29-30 while the move takes place, Miletich said Friday.
“I’m just looking at the calendar, and I’m saying, ‘OK, I have two months,’ and that looks OK to me, to know that I have two months.”
When she reopens at the new location, the Miletichs will go from having “the most inconvenient store” downtown, parking-wise, to the new location with parking galore and lots more of what’s made her store a downtown mainstay since 1975, when, at age 26, she opened it with $12,000 from a backer, she said.
“There’s just too much to be done right now, but the lists are getting shorter,” Miletich said.
The new name of the newly located store will be Country Aire Natural Foods Market.
As for keeping the country-downtown ambiance, the 1952 John Deere and Farmall tractors just might help.
They sit high above the first floor of the Gottschalks building, lording over unfinished walls in a building three years empty of anything but disappointment.
The old and the new
When the Miletichs bought the 66-year-old, two-floor building, they had visions of combining old and new: the look of the former occupants — the Peoples store, Lamont’s Apparel and Gottschalks department stores — with the homespun health-food-store look of Country Aire.
New features include a south entrance from the parking lot, an enclosed deli, expanded racks for local and certified organic produce, local wines, bulk food, tea, herbs, spices, organic coffees, housewares, vitamins and personal products, and a bulk-foods-buying area.
They include an enclosed incense and candle room to accommodate the scent-sensitive, juice- and wheat-grass-drink stations, a pot-bellied stove, six cash registers and antiques that will line the walls around the store’s entire inside upper perimeter.
They’ve added a mezzanine of offices to the interior for store supervisors.
There also will be an enclosed “kids zone” play area, a pot-bellied stove — and places to sit for Wi-Fi browsing.
“We want to create a homey atmosphere,” Miletich said.
“We don’t want to lose that atmosphere.
“A lot of people say, ‘Oh, no, it will not be the same.’ I think they will be gently surprised.”
Holistic businesses
The first floor will remain unused for at least the first year of operation, but “holistic awareness professionals” have contacted her about setting up shop there.
Having acupuncturists, massage therapists and naturopaths on the first floor seems a perfect fit, Miletich said.
“You’ve got holistic awareness, and right upstairs, you’ve got your wholesome awareness,” she said.
The new store will require more employees.
She has 14 now and will need 39, including a half-dozen for the deli, but she’s not soliciting applications and won’t be advertising for workers.
That’s because after the Miletichs bought the building last summer, she received 260 unsolicited applications from young and old hailing from all walks of life.
One was a former pharmacist.
“They were saying things like, ‘I want to finish my working career in a place I really enjoy working,’” Miletich recalled.
She said the Gottschalks building was listed for sale at one time for $1.7 million, so buying it for less than half that was “a pretty good deal, but expensive for us,” Miletich said.
What helped them was an in-perpetuity conservation easement the North Olympic Land Trust purchased from them in 2011 for $195,000 on the 21.4-acre berry farm she grew up on — “I grew up on a berry farm, not a dairy farm,” Miletich quipped — along salmon- and trout-bearing Siebert Creek.
“It’s a blend of community, commerce and conscience,” Miletich said.
Land trust acting Executive Director Michelle d’Hemecourt said Friday that Miletich’s easement was critical to protecting valuable waterway, and the fact that the proceeds were routed into the Miletichs’ health-food-store venture is exactly in line with the land trust’s efforts: using conservation easement proceeds for “leveraging to improve our community and enhance our economy.”
The Miletichs will continue to own the building that Country Aire is now housed in, and Robyn said she hates to leave an empty storefront downtown.
So far, there are no potential renters.
“I get emotional about that,” she said.
“I think someone will come along.”
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Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-417-3536 or at paul.gottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
