The fire ruined the entire strip mall, which also housed a barber shop, a pet supply store and a pet grooming business. All of those businesses have since moved to other sites, or just closed. The remains of the building were demolished last spring. Since then, Ranck said he’s been waiting for the county to come through with new building permits.
His new store will “have a fresh new modern look,” Ranck said. “It won’t be completely different but it’ll have an angled front” that will be more convenient for cars pulling in and out, he said. “There will be two rental spaces beside the store, instead of the three we had before.”
If all goes well, Ranck said, the store will be open for business by early spring. His contractor, Jim Pidgeon Enterprises of West Hazel Dell, has told him construction should take no longer than three months, he said.
“We’re ready to start building right now,” he said in early January. “I hope people will see work underway within a couple of weeks.”
Lure of lunch
Ranck and his late wife, Melanie, bought the Sifton Stop ‘n’ Shop business in 1986. Ranck said he believes a neighborhood store has been on this spot since the 1920s or 1930s. It was rebuilt several times, he said.
When he and Melanie bought the business, he said, it became a place where contractors and construction workers, who were getting busy building up what was then the remote east county countryside between Vancouver and Camas, could stop by for fresh food.
“I served so many contractors sack lunches,” Ranck said. “Back in the day there wasn’t that much of a deli presence east of Interstate 205. It became a good spot for people to get nice, fresh sandwiches and soups and pizzas. All the old-timers knew it.
“There was literally a generation that grew up there. I can remember small children coming in with their parents in 1986, and I saw them as adults coming in with their own kids,” he said.
Now, he said, he’s disappointed that taggers and vandals have targeted the fenced-off property. That’s another reason why he’s eager to start rebuilding, he said.
“Hopefully the community will embrace the store as they did when my wife and I ran it for 30 years,” he said. The couple sold the business when Melanie Ranck got sick in 2008. She died in 2010 and, after a few years “sitting around,” Ranck said, he felt ready to buy it back and rename it Sifton Market. That happened in summer 2016. The fire occurred just a few months later.
A banner has been on display on the fence surrounding the site that memorializes store manager Hooser, the single mother of three daughters. An online fundraiser has helped amass college funds for them, her mother said last spring.
“Everything’s unfortunate about what happened,” Ranck said. “I don’t think I’ve quite recovered. I don’t think I’ll ever recover from the loss of life that occurred.”