Rathdrum Trading Post Hardware fights to stay in community

RATHDRUM — Members of the Rathdrum community were in an uproar when Rathdrum Trading Post Hardware announced Wednesday that it had been served an eviction notice.

The hometown hardware store is trying to find a resolution to the eviction, which requires the business to leave its present location at 16484 N. Highway 41 by midnight on March 31.

"I’m shocked," Barney Pryor of Rathdrum said Thursday. "Just really sorry to hear."

"Every time I’ve walked in here, from day one, they’ve treated me like I was from here," said Shaun Brophy, who recently moved to Rathdrum from Illinois. "There’s always someone waiting to greet you and point you in the right direction. They treat you well, the prices are fair, you just feel welcome. It beats going all the way to a big box store where you’re just another number."

The eviction notice came as a surprise to Rathdrum Trading Post Hardware store manager Matt Smith, who received the news Monday.

"Monday we woke up in an OK world," he said. "Tuesday we woke up and it was turmoil."

Smith, a partner in the store, explained that the lease with the Lavigne Drug Group was going to expire March 31, but Trading Post was trying to negotiate an extension. Trading Post had plans to begin construction on a new building this spring and relocate in front of the Rathdrum Super 1 this fall. Smith said the Lavigne Group may have felt slighted by the decision to move and "they felt that we shouldn’t have been doing what we were doing."

Meanwhile, the building where Trading Post presently stands has been on the market for some time, but Smith did not know that it had been sold until the news was delivered with the eviction notice.

"We are not happy," Smith said of being kept in the dark about the sale of the building. "We had no communication and contact with the previous owner was not fruitful. Any time you have no communication, you have a chance for misunderstandings. The fact is we knew we were going to be out. Regardless of the situation, it’s not a comfortable situation for us."

Smith said the rent has always been paid on time or even ahead, and that he and his crew have put a lot of work into the store and its exterior, including lighting, asphalt, fencing and the overhang.

"We’ve invested heavily into it," he said. "We've obviously kept the store up. We’ve been ideal tenants."

On Thursday, Smith met with Brian Anderson, a purchasing partner with DT Rathdrum LLC, the holding company that bought the building from the Lavigne Group. Anderson said while the lease was held by the Lavignes, he and his partners could not interact with Smith or the Trading Post or let them know what was coming. He said his group was "stuck on the sidelines" until the deal closed and the building had changed hands.

"Our side of this story started last summer about the same time they were buying the piece of ground over in front of Super 1," Anderson said. "When it became clear that that was going to happen, we thought, 'OK, cool, they’ll be done with their new store by March and we’ll be able to seamlessly transition our guys in.' We worked out a deal to buy the building, worked out a deal with the new tenant, and then probably about October I came up here ... and it was obvious they hadn’t started construction. At that point we started to see that this was going to be problematic, but when you don’t own the building, you can’t go and interfere with the relationship they have with the current landlord."

The current Trading Post space has already been rented to a national retailer that is to move in after March 31, but Smith said there is hope; Trading Post could temporarily relocate into a building in the same shopping center while its new building is being constructed.

"Obviously, that’s quite an undertaking. It’s a smaller space, it is not geared for exactly what we do, but it would allow us to exist long enough to put our building in motion," Smith said. "That’s the key — we can’t be out of business for six months and survive. We have to be able to be somewhere."

Smith said while the eviction notice was "a blow" and "certainly devastating," he would like to give credit to the new owners for opening the lines of communication and making the transition as amicable as possible. He said in retrospect, he feels their hands were tied.

"We want to be respectful in this," he said. "It’s a huge thing that they have actually contacted us now and are willing to do this. It speaks well for them. It’s unfortunate the way this happened. It appears that we probably could have been told that this was occurring back in October, and if that was the case, we could have been out, we could have made amends and kept it going.

"They don’t want to leave a bad taste, they don’t want to leave us without an option," he said. "There might be some limitations on what they can do, but the fact is they are talking with us now and they are working with us."

He said he doesn’t believe the new Ace Hardware coming into the area has anything to do with this abrupt announcement.

"It’s just a coincidence that they’re opening up and coming in," he said. "Obviously, they have an idea of capturing business."

Smith said he and Trading Post staff are humbled by the support of the community, which was loudly expressed on social media as well as throughout the town.

"We hope that they’ll be understanding as we are in a less-than-ideal situation, but in the end, if we’re able to do this, we have a wonderful store planned," he said. "We have good things ahead.

"We’re a fighter. Rathdrum is in our name, it’s in our blood. That’s where we want to be."