The new Goat’s Beard Mountain Supplies store at Mazama incorporates repurposed materials both inside and out. The 7,000-square-foot building fronts Lost River Road, adjacent to the Mazama Store. Offices will be available for lease on the second floor.
Outdoor store features variety of recycled materials
If the new Goat’s Beard Mountain Supplies store at Mazama feels like a much older building, that’s likely because it’s largely built from the repurposed remains of other long-gone structures.
Goat’s Beard owners Rick and Missy LeDuc, who also own the nearby Mazama Store, had the building’s designer and builder incorporate recycled materials — boards, beams, wood posts, steel girders, metal siding, detailed ironwork and more — throughout the interior and exterior of the inviting new space.
The new Goat’s Beard is scheduled to open Saturday (Nov. 2), if all the final details are taken care of. The store is closed this week while inventory from the old store, just a few yards away, is transferred to the new space.
Much of what you will see came from somewhere else. Some of the building materials were salvaged from dismantled buildings around the region, some came from a previous incarnation of the Mazama Store, some came from the LeDucs’ own home. Nearly anything that looked usable was put to use. The light fixtures for the sales floor used to illuminate the Mazama Store. Even the now-closed Art Institute of Seattle provided some counters.
“Our big focus was to re-use as much as we possibly could,” Rick LeDuc said in an interview last weekend. “It’s such a shame that we throw so much stuff away.”
Doug Potter of Shackitecture in Winthrop found a lot of the materials, LeDuc said.
More room
All of that is well and good for the store’s managers, CB and Micki Thomas, but they are also looking forward to having more sales space for gear and clothing, ample storage, and lots of room for rental equipment.
The 7,000-square-foot, multi-purpose building includes not just the main floor, but also a spacious basement and a suite of leasable offices on the second floor. Three or four enclosed office spaces will be available for lease, and will share a common area.
The store features a large covered deck — deliberately big enough that people wheeling bikes could pass though with plenty of room left for other users, or for outdoor sales, LeDuc said.
“We had the property, and it seemed like they [the Thomases] could use more space,” LeDuc said of the new site. Barb Preston of Pinto Design was the designer, and Kevin Drozdov the contactor.
There will still be evidence of other recent construction. The septic system that serves Goat’s Beard and the Mazama Store had to be upgraded, an initially unforeseen project that delayed the new store’s opening by several months.
The store will also be much more visible, fronting on Lost River Road as opposed to the old store, a cabin-ish structure behind the Mazama Store courtyard.
And what about the old store? LeDuc said he would be happy to see someone develop it as some kind of “evening place … cute and cozy” — a pub, cafe or combination. He said he’s open to ideas, and some interest has been expressed.
