Politics from the Palouse to Puget Sound

Tuesday, June 27, 2006

Coincidence?

Do you think the timing of this announcement is coincidental? I wonder. Thursday, the Wal-Mart hearing is held up for another four months. Friday, Eddie Bauer announces they are going into Lewiston.

From Saturday's Lewiston Tribune:

Eddie Bauer plans Lewiston store

Eddie Bauer, an 85-year-old Northwest company that specializes in casual outdoor apparel and accessories, has applied for a building permit at Lewiston.

As proposed, the 6,500-square-foot store will be built at Nez Perce Plaza near three other new stores expected to open in the next couple of weeks.

Pier 1 Imports, Famous Footwear and Ross Dress for Less received certificates of occupancy Friday, allowing them to open the doors to customers, city building permits representative Sarah Redenbaugh said.

Eddie Bauer's proposal is for a moderately sized retail store of about 6,500 square feet, the same as Famous Footwear, and will be located on the shoe store's east side. In comparison, Pier 1's store is almost 9,000 square feet of space and Ross will have a little more than 30,000 square feet of space.

Site plans show spaces for three more stores, two of them in the 30,000-square-foot range.

Builders and architects are the same for all the stores, Redenbaugh said.

Applications for Pier 1 and Famous Footwear were filed in May of last year and building permits were issued in July.

A telephone call to Eddie Bauer's Redmond, Wash., headquarters Friday afternoon wasn't immediately returned.

The cost of construction was estimated at $450,000 on the application.

According to the company's Web site, Eddie Bauer was an outdoorsman who opened the first store, Eddie Bauer's Sports Shop, in Seattle in 1920. He ran the company for 48 years and patented a specially designed goose down jacket.

During World War II the company produced more than 50,000 jackets to keep U.S. Army Air Corps flight crews warm. It also outfitted the first American to summit Mount Everest.

The company shifted in 1970 from expedition gear and clothing to casual lifestyle apparel. A year later it was sold to General Mills, which began a national expansion, and in 1988 to Spiegel Inc.

Spiegel filed for Chapter 11 reorganization in 2003 and Eddie Bauer Holdings became a stand-alone company again last year. On May 25, possible sale of the company was announced.

The company said in its 2006 first quarter report that saw a $27 million drop in earnings from 2005 that it had introduced too many changes in the Fall/Holiday 2005 collection and would be taking actions to recapture its core customers.
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1 comment:

April E. Coggins said...

On the bright side, we are getting a Cartridge World franchise next to Paper Pals and Papa Murphy's. Hopefully, they will end last minute runs to Office Depot in Moscow.

There is also activity in Crimson and Gray's previous location. Hopefully it is a new business coming in and not C&G making the final move out.

I'm sure PARD feels left out of the process and will whine about not having "choice" in the direction of Pullman. I wonder what would happen if we had a public process to decide whether PARD should exist and whether or not their members should be allowed to live in Pullman? I don't think they would fare very well. I think they know it too, which is why they had to boost their petition numbers with 43% non-Pullman signers and why they must go outside of Pullman to find their funding.