Sustaining a Cherished Memory

Top: Exterior view of the newly restored Marketplace. Contributed photo Left: Interior view nearing completion with the newly restored original floors and the exposed mezzanine. Contributed photo Bottom: Mezzanine view of Bliss seamlessly merging with Monticello in the foreground. Photo by Leslie Gast 

The term “sustainability” usually brings to mind the environmental protection realm.

Sustainable soils, waters, forests, farming and construction methods, food and energy supplies, and more.

Necessities of life that older generations would like to pass on to their kids in at least as good a shape — and without wrecking the natural world from where it all springs.

History can be thought of in the same way, especially in regard to the notable buildings that are its timeless performance stages. Exhibit A for this sustainability issue of Edible Door can be found in the heart of Sturgeon Bay’s downtown, where two entrepreneurs restarted a 140-year retail legacy at one of the city's busiest corners, North Third Avenue between Michigan and Louisiana streets.

“Having this (26,000) square feet (on three levels) sitting here dirty and vacant wasn't pleasing to our community,” said Todd Trimberger, who with husband Dr. Kelton Reitz reopened that empty expanse last November as The Marketplace, just in time for the 2020 Christmas shopping season.

“The Marketplace opening simply could not have made a bigger splash than seeing those new windows reveal the magic of a building that had gone unloved for far too long,” said Destination Sturgeon Bay Executive Director Pam Seiler.

The redevelopment gave fresh oxygen to what had been a closed-down Younkers department store and, before that, one of the earliest locations of the former H.C. Prange retail chain — and before that, the L.M. Washburn Co., Sturgeon Bay's most in-demand. all-purpose shopping magnet of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Younkers parent Bon-Ton Stores Inc. declared bankruptcy in early 2018 and held a liquidation sale in Sturgeon Bay that summer.

“Kelton and I believe in Sturgeon Bay and are invested to stay here,” said Trimberger, a former executive director of the city's visitor bureau now known as Destination Sturgeon Bay. “It started as a joke among friends with everyone saying we should buy it. We kind of started talking and thought, maybe we should explore this, so we went to the bank and told them we were thinking about making an offer, and we got an attorney, too.”

The deal’s roughest sailing in the early going was some one-sided phone tag with the building’s California-based owner, who had leased the store space to Younkers.

“He had never been here, never even seen the building,” Trimberger recalled. “I guess (with all the Younkers closings), we were low on the totem pole of priorities, but we kept calling and saying we’re walking away if we don't get some dialogue here. From there, it was just an absolutely smooth, amenable, polite conversation and, boom, we owned it. Literally we closed on a Friday (April 10, 2020) and the (interior) demolition began the following Monday.”

The reconstruction itself proved to be fairly low-stress compared to some remodeling projects Trimberger has undertaken.

“We started having people look at the structure (before the sale), the roof, the electrical, everything,” he said. “All of these tradesmen thought they were walking into a tear-down, but they went away saying we have to save this building. (It was just) how solid the building was, how dry. There were no skeletons in the walls, so to speak.” In a word, sustainable.

“We feel like with the history of the Washburn family and the Prange family, we are custodians of it. We take pride in that,” Trimberger said.

Owners Todd Trimberger and Dr. Kelton Reitz. Photo by Leslie Gast

FOUR SHOPS IN ONE — AND MORE COMING

The Marketplace gathers under one roof a collection of high-quality shops. On the ground floor are Bliss, Trimberger’s 20-year-old home decor store; women's boutique Lola May’s; and Monticello’s, a women's clothing and accessories shop that relocated following a successful 2020 holiday pop-up shop at The Marketplace. All three had previously been neighbors on Jefferson Street at the edges of downtown, which features a row of specialty shops inside converted Victorian homes. Monticello moved its retail segment to The Marketplace but kept its original location as a fitting and planning studio for custom wardrobe designs.

The three stores mesh seamlessly without walls and with only tiny signs — all the better for browsing — to the point that it’s scarcely noticeable where one business ends and another begins. The layout encourages a cooperative atmosphere, Trimberger said — which was taken to heartwarming extremes once when one of the merchants had a medical emergency. He asked if the others would mind the store rather than seeing it close for the day.

“They would jump in and help each other with wrapping (purchases) or answering customers,” he said. Above those three shops on the mezzanine, where Younkers’ lingerie section had been, is the Shear Style Plus salon, another Sturgeon Bay-area fixture that will be renamed when it joins the KMS hairstyling family.

Set to join KMS on the perch is an outlet of De Pere's SmithMaker Artisan Co., which sells arts and crafts from primarily Wisconsin vendors and was a godsend to them when the pandemic canceled the outdoor summer markets and festivals that had been their lifeblood. Owner Ruth Fameree put "smith" in the name as a tribute to her maiden name and because it signifies creators — blacksmith, wordsmith, and so on. Like Trimberger and Reitz, Fameree took a major gamble during the pandemic by introducing her shop in 2020.

About 3,000 square feet of space remains on the mezzanine plus the entire basement level. Trimberger is in no great rush to fill it and prefers to be choosy to find the right fits.

“We could have some smaller vendors down there,” Trimberger said. “A couple artists are interested in some gallery space, and yesterday I had an inquiry about making it a design studio. We have a good neighborhood going, and we’re not going to compromise just to fill it. It’s a three-year lease with a three-year renewal, so it’s like a marriage commitment, and we all have to get along in the same sandbox.

“But because we own Bliss, if the right neighbor came along, we could move around a bit to make it work.”

A $250,000 state grant aided the restoration, as did $100,000 from the city of Sturgeon Bay to help install public bathrooms on the main floor, accessible through the northerly, Louisiana Street side.

“The Marketplace opening simply could not have made a bigger splash than seeing those new windows reveal the magic of a building that had gone unloved for far too long.”
– Pam Seiler, Destination Sturgeon Bay Executive Director 

RICH HISTORY PRESERVED

A bout of economic and nostalgic angst struck Sturgeon Bay three years ago when Younkers went out of business, sold off its remaining merchandise and left behind bare walls and floors — an enormous nothingness in the middle of the main tourism and business district.

“When we first found out that Younkers would be leaving Sturgeon Bay, I think it’s safe to say that everyone was worried," said Seiler, of Destination Sturgeon Bay. "We knew that it would take a lot of time and money to bring the Third Avenue location back to its original glory.

“The building was solid, but years worth of ‘renovation on top of renovation,’ in addition to the sheer size of the building, scared away potential developers. From day one, the owner of the property said that these types of sales happen when someone local steps in to save and restore. He was right. When you have people who are as creative and visionary as Todd and Kelton, the project possibilities began to take off.”

"We had been thinking of expanding Bliss (at its former location), but then it would have been outsized for that Jefferson Street surrounding community," Trimberger said.

Trimberger, ironically, served on a committee of the business community that selected products and displays for the windows of the abandoned storefront. But window shopping was not the same as shopping shopping.

“We just didn’t want it to look too terrible for Harvest Fest (in September)," Trimberger said. “We tried to get a national chain to go in there but couldn't get anyone to bite.”

It was another case of rising to the challenge for a community that has managed to save endangered property species like an old, brick elementary schoolhouse on the city’s west side; the observation tower at Potawatomi State Park; and even the “steel bridge” (Michigan Street Bridge) that has become the symbol of Sturgeon Bay. The Marketplace sits within a historic district where many of the revitalized commercial buildings are around 100 years old.

The Marketplace co-developers kept the beloved awnings on the storefront and the two long, throwback staircases inside, rebuilding one of the latter. The building never had one of Prange’s signature escalators. But they added an elevator, even though the renovation was not extensive enough to make it a mandatory must under disability access laws.

They also uncovered the original pitch-black iron railings fronting the mezzanine that had been previously walled off. Natural light poured in when a drop ceiling was removed that had been blocking banks of windows on the upper north side of the building.

In an alley behind the building, Trimberger took out a skywalk that connected the store to a separate structure housing the manager’s office. He has sold the other building.

“Where we have our shipping and receiving back there must have been where Washburn did, too, because you can still see the (rolling) tracks on the walls for the barn doors,” he said.

The partners kept the pleasing touch of hardwood floors on the main level. Trimberger estimated the distinctive flooring dates to “at least 1935 but likely not longer,” because that’s when a massive fire consumed the then-wood-frame store. Hardwood floors “undoubtedly would not have survived that (fire),” Trimberger said.

“If you look at the old photos, that (wood) building had bump-out windows so it looked kind of like the Dancing Bear,” Trimberger said, referring to a nearby gift shop.

The fire convinced more downtown businesses to build — or rebuild — in brick and locally quarried limestone rather than wood. Additionally, after the fire, Prange-Washburn removed apartments that had been on the second floor, making way for the future mezzanine and high-ceiling look, Trimberger said.

The blaze is a central event in the store’s historical story that traces to 1870, when L.M. Washburn journeyed from Maine to the Door Peninsula in the fairly new state of Wisconsin to serve as bookkeeper and manager for A.L. Lawrence Sr.’s mercantile business.

Lawrence operated a general store in Sturgeon Bay that moved to the present-day “Prange/Younkers site” in 1880. In 1879, Lawrence also opened a branch in the long-gone town of Sawyer — the name for the future west side of Sturgeon Bay — and it remained in business until 1912.

ROOTS IN GROCERY

Washburn acquired his boss’ share of the business in the late 1880s and then bought out the former owner’s son, A.L. Jr., in 1901. That was when the store took on the Washburn name alone, and it carried on as the city’s foremost grocery and dry-goods retailer for nearly three decades.

The aging Washburn sold in 1930 to Henry Carl Prange, son of the founder of the iconic regional chain that’s now vanished from the retail landscape. The Sturgeon Bay store was just the third in the Prange family, following its hometown flagship in Sheboygan and Green Bay. The company would grow to 25 department stores in three states, 20 Prange-Way discount outlets and 106 id boutiques.

H.C. Prange Jr. was determined to keep his family company growing despite the stock market crash of 1929 and ensuing Great Depression. The May 9, 1930, edition of the Door County Advocate gave his merger with Washburn end-of-a-world-war treatment, with a full dozen stories and side articles taking up the entire front page.

The stories highlighted Prange’s wholesale purchasing power, promising greater selection and lower prices. Washburn, the newspaper noted, would be given a Prange’s board of directors seat and an office at the store where he could still hear from his old clientele.

But it was fire, and not the nation’s economic slump, that almost did in the store in February 1935, just five years after the hyped Prange’s purchase. The fire wiped away the guts of Prange-Washburn and Draeb's Jewelers next door.

Contemporary news accounts tell of spotlights from the Door Theater marquee a few blocks north (now Third Avenue Playhouse) lighting up the night downtown to aid the firefighters. Residents helped the endangered nearby businesses evacuate merchandise, but some not-so-good Samaritans who helped “safeguard” the wares of a liquor store apparently made off with free booze.

Within six months, though, to the relief of locals, Prange’s announced it was rebuilding. It remained a fixture on North Third until its 1992 purchase by Younkers, an occasion that brought a visit from the new owner’s CEO, Thomas Gould.

Trimberger said locals are more than appreciative that he and Reitz found a way to revive those memories and make even more.

“There’s been an outpouring; people stop us on the street or in the grocery store and have tears in their eyes because this is a memory of their childhood,” he said. “It gave people something positive to focus on in a dark time (of the pandemic), seeing this reborn during a really nasty time.”