PORT ANGELES — A group brainstorming a new business for the former Gottschalks building downtown is seeking a general manager, with hopes of opening an locally controlled department-store-style “anchor” store next summer.
Jerry Nichols, co-owner of Coldwell Banker Uptown Realty and a member of the interim board, said the group needs a manager with expertise in merchandise purchasing.
“We’re trying to fill it locally,” he said.
“If there are people out here that have this kind of experience [selecting products and overseeing buying], if there’s anybody locally who looks capable of doing the job, we’d prefer to go there rather than go to a headhunter.”
He estimated it would cost between $1 million and $2 million to start the business — envisioned as a new downtown anchor store — at 200 W. First St., where Gottschalks closed its doors in May 2009.
He said the group hopes to have a store operating by next summer. To do that, it would have to purchase clothing this fall, and so it hopes to hire a general manager within the next couple of months, if it can find a local person with the necessary expertise.
Nichols said the general manager would help the group figure out how much is needed from investors to start the as-yet unnamed business.
The group is not yet looking for investors, but once an idea of how much it would start to get the business going, 150 or more investors would be sought.
“We’ve had several people pledge up to $25,000 each, but how that holds up once everything starts coming together and once they see the bottom line, we don’t know,” Nichols said.
The group hasn’t settled on a salary for the general manager. That would depend upon experience, Nichols said, declining to estimate a range.
It also won’t begin formal advertising for the position until it sees the results of its present “soft inquiries,” he added.
The planning group — formed in January by the K.O. Erickson trust, which owns the building — is currently made up of local business people. In addition to Nichols, Kaj Ahlburg, Bill Herman, Ted Simpson and Roy and Mary Gotham are on the interim board.
The group — which has not yet incorporated the business — hopes that the store can sell name-brand clothing for men, women and children, shoes and cosmetics.
Nichols said the housewares items that Gottschalks sold aren’t high on the priority list.
“The store would not be associated with a chain store but it would be able to stand on its own,” Nichols said.
“We have had many discussions with people like Bill Herman, the people who own The Toggery and Jack Little from Swain’s [General Store],” he added.
“This would be a sort of middle-of-the-road place and they all said that it shouldn’t compete with other stores in town — and that when Gottschalks was here it didn’t compete with them or Walmart or anything really,” Nichols said.
The group also had considered establishing a co-op department store, but ultimately determined that idea wouldn’t work, Nichols said.
Gottschalks closed the doors of its downtown Port Angeles store on May 30, 2009 after the national retail chain declared bankruptcy in January 2009.
Since that time, the trust has been searching for a business to make its home in the 34,900-square-foot building.
The building had housed a department store since 1954 — People’s, Lamonts and Gottschalks — and was a cornerstone in the Port Angeles downtown.
Nichols said the store could be a boon for downtown — drawing people to an “anchor” store similar to how a shopping mall has larger stores to draw more people.
When the new store opens, some 14 to 16 people would be hired, Nichols estimated, with at least four of those focused on buying merchandise.
For more information about applying or investing, phone Nichols at 360-417-2803.
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Reporter Paige Dickerson can be reached at 360-417-3535 or at paige.dickerson@peninsuladailynews.com.
