‘Spontaneous’ Store Opens In Mall

Thu., Feb. 24, 2000

By Trinity Hartman trinityh@spokesman.com

The sign will go up next week but, in the meantime, the newest store in the Spokane Valley Mall announces its presence with a color display designed to overload the senses.

At Gateway Gardens, Tibetan banners hang from the ceiling, tie-dyed shirts crowd a clothing rack and beat poetry can be found on the back bookshelf.

The store is a multicultural-Deadhead-hemp-New Age extravaganza.

“There’s no sense of rhyme or reason here,” said owner Lynne Hutton. “It’s spontaneous.”

Gateway Gardens had been open temporarily in the mall during the holiday season. It did so well that Hutton decided to take a permanent spot next to Walden Books and The Bon Marche on the second floor.

Hutton has another Gateway Gardens store in the Silver Lake Mall in Coeur d’Alene.

The store boasts coffee, lip balm, hand lotion, pretzels, beer kits and boxer shorts, all made of hemp products.

“I’m really an advocate for hemp,” said Hutton, whose business card is a tube of “Gateway Gardens’ All Natural Hemp Lip Balm.”

Currently the Valley store has four employees.

Car dealer moves

A Valley car dealer moved down the street last week.

Silverauto Sales moved from the corner of Sprague and Argonne to 14811 E. Sprague Ave. Feb. 14.

Owner Ron Medlen decided to leave the site near Evergreen after hearing that road construction would lop of part of the already-small lot.

The move has quadrupled the size of the building and will allow Silverauto to open a car-service center. Previously, the dealership had one mechanic who serviced only customers’ cars. They plan to add a second mechanic this spring and service all cars.

Silverauto had been at the old site 4-1/2 years.

Art store closes

An art store in the Spokane Valley Mall closed Monday.

World of Art Gallery, a store specializing in framed and unframed prints, had a 5,000-square-foot space on the second floor near The Bon Marche.

It had agreed to rent the area temporarily during the holiday season and then stayed on because business was good, said owner Martin Petersen.

All of the discounted prints from the Valley store will go back to the factory outlet in Post Falls and will remain discounted, Petersen said.

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