PORT TOWNSEND — Quimper Mercantile has purchased a 1-acre parcel on the corner of Sims Way and Evans Vista, where it plans to build a new storefront in the next two to three years.
To raise funds for construction, a round of stocks will be issued sometime in 2026.
Peter Quinn, the mercantile’s board president, said the location is an ideal retail opportunity.
“People think there’s a lot of traffic that comes off of the ferry where we’re located right now, but significantly more comes into town through Sims Way,” Quinn said.
The store is owned by more than 800 mostly local shareholders, whose stock purchases funded the opening of the store in its current location, 1121 Water St., in 2012.
The new location also is central to a number of new developments, including Port Townsend’s Evans Vista project and Madrona Ridge, Quinn said.
“We feel that we’re moving into the nexus for the major growth area for housing,” he said.
The property, purchased for $505,000, is zoned commercially and already has basically all the needed utilities on the street, Quinn said.
“It’s a very buildable lot. We’re very happy about it,” he said.
Quinn said the board doesn’t foresee any difficulty in planning or working with the city on permitting.
“We’ve already been through a customer assistance meeting with them,” he said. “I have a pretty high expectation that the building we design is what they intend to approve there.”
Conversations with builders are underway, he added.
Decisions around the design or size of the new building are yet to be determined. The Quimper Mercantile’s current location has about 20,000 square feet, Quinn said.
The current store has more backroom than is needed, Quinn added.
“We believe we’re actually going to have some economy of scale by being able to design from the ground up,” he said. “We expect we might have more retail floor space.”
The newly announced public stock offering is set to happen sometime in 2026, but few details are ironed out yet. The company has to go through a direct public offering (DPO) process before it can gain approval to start selling stock, Quinn said.
The DPO would need to be filed and approved by the state Department of Financial Institutions.
Opening the original store was funded by a DPO, which earned $743,000 from mostly local buyers, 80 percent to 90 percent, Quinn said. Buyers were required to be within the state, he added.
Those shareholders own 100 percent of the company, Quinn said.
“What we put in the bylaws is that no one can own more than 10 percent of the company,” Quinn said. “We wanted to not allow for any coalescing of the voting power and to make sure that we always stayed where we were and that the decisions were the community’s decision.”
Quinn said he doesn’t think anyone owns more than 5 percent of the stocks.
“One of the things we have to do is make sure that we take care of our existing shareholders in the way that we offer the new stock offering,” Quinn said. “We’re heavy into deciding how to make sure that it’s enticing for new shareholders and honoring existing shareholders.”
With their current lease set to expire in 2032, the store’s leadership decided to make a move following a proposed increase in their lease, Quinn said. The property is owned by Hall Equities Group, a company based in Walnut Creek, Calif.
“We attempted to extend the lease, re-negotiate, but we couldn’t come to an agreement,” Quinn said. “The landlord is aware of what we’re doing, and we’ve been talking to him the entire time.”
The new direction will give the mercantile a chance to design a building solely for its own desired specifications.
The Quimper Mercantile has 17 employees who make an average of $21 per hour, according to a press release. The store is guided by a 12-member board and its general manager is Casey Hannam.
The store’s annual sales have reached $3.5 million, the release said.
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Reporter Elijah Sussman can be reached by email at elijah.sussman@peninsuladailynews.com.
