The Bus Stop Market, a longtime Vancouver convenience store, is slated to close Feb. 15 after two decades of operation near the former downtown bus mall on Seventh Street.
The store opened in 1999 following an extensive rehabilitation of the building, according to a Columbian story at that time. The current co-owner of the store, Pill Kim, said she bought the business in 2009.
Kim said the store is closing because the building’s current owners declined to renew the market’s lease for the space, although one of the co-owners, local Realtor Marci Caputo, said it was more complicated than that.
Caputo said she was previously a co-owner of the building and she and her husband recently purchased full ownership, but it came with multiple overlapping and unclear leases, she said, so her goal is to start over and try to revitalize the building and the surrounding area.
“We’re really focused on improving the downtown area and making it as good as it can be,” she said.
The Main Street block between Sixth and Seventh streets has seen a number of businesses close in recent years, including the Magenta Theater and Cameo Main Street Loan and Pawn Shop. The transit mall was closed in 2007 at the request of the city of Vancouver as part of a push to reduce crime and homelessness downtown.
The two-story building sits at the intersection of Main and Seventh streets opposite the Turtle Place plaza and bus station. It was originally built in 1910, according to the Clark County assessor’s office.
In its current configuration it includes six apartments on the upper floor and three commercial spaces on the ground floor; the market and an adjacent space open out onto Main Street, while the third space opens out down the street on Seventh.
The space next door to the market is already vacant, and the third space is occupied by an appraisal service. Employees at that business said they haven’t been asked to move, and Caputo said the current change will only impact the Bus Stop Market.
One apartment tenant does appear to have been displaced, however: Leslie Boedecker said she lived in one of the apartments until late last year and worked as the on-site manager for the building, but was unable to renew her lease late last year.
Kim said she and her husband had already paid off the original loan that they used to purchase the Bus Stop Market business, and the couple plan to move to Hoquiam to operate a store that they recently purchased in the area.
But she said she’s still disappointed to be closing the business, which she said has played an important role in the community. The nearby Plaid Pantry opened about two years after Kim began operating the Bus Stop Market, and Kim said the market was previously the only convenience store in downtown, making it a frequent destination for nearby residents and bus riders.
Cindy Brester, who has worked as a clerk at the market for the past 17 years, estimated that the store serves about 100 to 150 customers per day.
“All the homes around here are upset we’re closing because we cater to the elderly — we help them a lot,” she said. “We sell a lot of deli food — we’re known for our chicken, jojos and my homemade ranch.”
The building and its two storefronts on Main Street have been host to a long list of businesses in the past 118 years. Recent tenants include a tattoo parlor, a secondhand store and Greyhound agency office.
Older tenants, according to the Columbian archives, included a dry goods store, a dentist, a movie theater and a tavern. Boedecker said she also recalled hearing that parts of the building were at various times home to a military recruiting station and a barbershop.
Caputo said she’s looking for a new tenant for the market space, and it could be another store of some sort or a different type of tenant such as a restaurant, but it’s too early to say for sure.
“Ideally we’d like to make it something that will rejuvenate the street,” she said.
