Soon after Kathy and I moved to Washington state we visited the town of Sumner. It was quaint. It had a junk shop and a Salvation Army right in the middle of the main street. Kathy said it reminded her of Mayberry from the Andy Griffith show. But it certainly wasn't sticky.
Then the Salvation Army building was put up for sale. Kathy and I explored putting a team of investors together to buy it, it was one of the biggest one story buildings in the town and a perfect location. We brought in the best retail entrepreneur teams that we know and spent three days working on the business plan. Basically divide the space up. A restaurant, or Eastern Washington focused wine bar that is different than anything else in the area, a spa, use all the wall space as an art gallery and some sort of retail. On the second night, my friends looked up at me and asked, "Why are you doing this? You don't need it, your job meets your income needs." I replied that they town needed something like this. Rudy replied, "There is a lot more work to doing something like this than you might think." Then they told me story after story of the things that had happened in their restaurants and stores. The madness passed. That was three years ago.
Today, after puppy training class we wanted to hang around the town for socialization, he has a big test coming up in a couple of weeks. Sorci's is the highest end restaurant in the town and sometimes they will let us sit on their outside table with the puppy. We called ahead and they said no, outside patio was not open tonight. So we decided to walk around; passed around the old Salvation Army building and it was beautiful; totally redone. And there was an outside table, it was a crepe shop, (only one in town), called Craft 19. I hadn't had a crepe in a while. So Kathy, the puppy, Yogi F. Von Kinghaus, and I sat down. While we were eating, a man came out of the building, polishing the windows, he was none other than my primary care physician, Dr. Waldo Dagan. He took us on a tour, the site was first class. He had put together a team of investors, put in a restaurant, the spa opens in a couple of weeks, and there was a multi-use area anchored by financial investing; a very similar implementation of what we had considered.
After the tour, Dr. Dagan said, "The town needed something like this". All I have to say is sticky!
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