Less than a month ago, Mike Ward’s convenience store and apartment complex was destroyed in a late night fire. The closure of the Haines Quick Shop, Outfitter Liquor, Outfitter Sporting Goods, and Mike’s Bikes & Boards left a hole in the local economy.
But Ward, who owns several stores in Haines as well as in Wrangell and Petersburg, pivoted quickly. Much of the liquor delivery bound for Outfitter Liquor was sent instead to his Alaskan Liquor Store on Main Street. Next door, Caroline’s Closet – a clothing and gift store – has been repurposed to carry much of what the Quick Shop used to stock, everything from snack food to outdoor clothing, to Costco items.
Ward stopped by the Chilkat Valley News office recently to talk about his plans to rebuild and redevelop his businesses over the next few years.
Editor’s note: This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
McChesney: So what are you working on now? You’ve been calling your downtown location Caroline’s Quick Shop?
Ward: Yeah, by the end of the month we should be firing on all cylinders in our new location over here. We’ve got two pop cases coming in. I’ve got a freezer case coming because people want to buy ice cream, maybe pizza and stuff like that.
I assume the Quick Shop complex, with the Bikes and Board shop, the liquor store and essentially that whole set of businesses was profitable enough that you’d want to rebuild it?
Well, I mean, like the bike shop – I’ve been complaining about it for awhile because, you know, it’s not a big town. We came in a few years ago and sold quite a few bikes the first three years. There’s already a bike shop, but they were mostly tourist-oriented and high end. But, the market got flooded and we didn’t really get with the swing of the times on the E-bikes because there are so many new ones out there and I didn’t know anything about them, and I didn’t want to. Then, I didn’t have enough people to do rental paperwork. Then, you know, selling skateboards and putting them together for people and everything, there’s a lot of service involved in that. It just ends up being a losing proposition here in Haines. You end up losing face as a business and you don’t have the people to do it.
So, are you thinking you won’t rebuild the bike shop?
I’m still redeveloping my vision, right? My son, I think, if he sticks with it is going to be the one that determines whether or not Mikes Bike’s and Boards continues, because, it wasn’t me that it was named after, it was named after him. It was his idea – back from a school project basically. We had a few good years.
You told me the night of the fire that your office had burned up, too. What impact did that have on your ability to run your other businesses?
I have lots of knowledge, but I didn’t have a plan for this. So, I’m going to become an expert on off-site data storage. I lost two offices. My Harbor Bar & Restaurant office was in there, too. So, I’ve had to resurrect the entire year for both of those companies.
It’s a transition period. I’m on Main Street now. You’ve got a bunch of new people opening and closing the business, they’re participating in the handling of cash, counting the till, doing the deposit – they all need training. I’ve noticed that my customer service at my grocery store needs improvement. So, you know, I’m not a big believer in ‘everything happens for a reason. I’m not saying that’s why I’m here, but while I’m here – I’m going to deal with everything.”
And what are your long range plans?
I have eight acres at one and a half mile of the Haines Highway. I’ve had this property out there for a long time. We call it our expansion property. It’s past Sawmill Creek Road. I have a Bayliner and an old pickup out there. I’ve had some expansion plans there, but I’ve been waiting for the economy for 20 years.
I’ve an engineer working on a plan, an architect – Jensen Yorba Wall – took this project on. So that’s pretty cool.
The plans are evolving, but it’s a 90×66 building for now. The Quick Shop was 112 by 90.
It’s going to be a temporary location for Outfitter Liquor and Haines Quick Shop. So this will be 40 feet of liquor store and then 40 feet of convenience store. I want to put the sporting goods story in there, too, but I haven’t figured out exactly how because I want the convenience store to be all glass doors in the back, freezers and coolers, so you can feed them from the back and have cold backstock.
How fast do you think you’ll be able to get that up and running?
It’s a design and build. So, if we’re fortunate enough where we don’t get a really, early freeze then we’re hoping to be able to get that building up and then they can work on it all winter and we can open in the spring.
Oh, that fast? You don’t want to hang around downtown all year?
Right now, Main Street is going to be a disaster next summer with all the traffic. The liquor store brings a lot of traffic in.
This is a really crucial time and I don’t want to just sit on my hands and so ‘Oh well, I’ll just kind of wait until spring because my instincts tell me that would be a mistake. I feel like I need to be aggressive and show strength, just in case somebody else is looking at this market.”
So you’re thinking, build a temporary building to have a Quick Shop and liquor store in the next year and that gives you some breathing room to work on rebuilding the complex that burned down?
We are considering rebuilding on the original site. But, it’s going to be more than a year before that reopens. That location could be a temporary location for Haines Quick Shop, Outfitter Liquor and Outfitter Sporting Goods. And then when and if the old location is built and they’re ready to go home Then there could be a new business that will be very similar. I’m going to have two versions of those businesses, one on each end of town. That’s been my long-term plan.
And you see the market sustaining that?
Well I’m not going to leave them both open until midnight, you know. But, I feel like we’re probably missing out, we’re missing out on an unknown amount of business and people who get directly off the ferry and head right out of town. How many RVs and different things like that? We’ll never know until we capture it. I’m here for the long haul and I can afford to do it so I’m going to do it. I’ve been planning on it and now it has made its way up the priority list.
What’s it going to take to clean up all of the debris out there?
The timing is good. I’ve got Haynes Tormey and Haines Industrial on it. He’s got the scrap metal contract.
Do you have to do anything about potential contaminants in the debris?
That’s a good question. We had about 10 gallons of white gas. We had a little bit. A few canisters of propane. But, I think most of the stuff burned up, blew up. I think the diesel fuel tank had about 400 gallons in it. I think it just burned up because it’s intact and the cap’s off of it. But the Bobcat right next to it burned up bad.
Are you going to rebuild the apartments?
Never. Absolutely not. I’m done with apartments.