The Juniper Block Renovation

This post is long, long overdue, but it’s still something we want to record with a brief story and some photos. There is more detail in here than most customers would ever care about, but it's partly for ourselves, so look away if you're short on time or interest. The majority of the photos are at the bottom of the post.

Almost three years ago, we moved our flagship Calgary store from the Gresham Block, where it had been for 10 years, to a newer building down the street.

There were multiple reasons for the move. For one thing, the old building felt like it was falling down around our ears. It had tons of character (creaking floors, high tin ceilings, exposed brick) but was poorly maintained, and there were frequent water leaks in the pipes upstairs that would rain down on our products and furniture almost once a week. There was no air conditioning, and the heat would sometimes go out for days at a time in the winter. All in all, after ten years, it felt like the time was coming when we would have to move to something better whether we wanted to or not.

The biggest question facing us, and the biggest argument against moving at all, was location. We were well established in our spot and very in love with Inglewood as a neighbourhood, so staying close was a top priority. Secondly, the size. Our store was pretty large by retail standards, so finding something that could accommodate us was daunting. This was doubly so because of all the basement storage space we would be losing. Spices take up a fair bit of space when you have over 300 of them. The third consideration was character. Most of the retail opportunities that come up in Inglewood are in new buildings that are clean and bright and nicely built and completely lacking in old-school charm.

All of this is to say that we talked about moving but had no idea how we would ever make it work.

One day, three and a half years ago, a For Sale sign showed up in front of a building just a few doors down. It was a stand-alone three-story cinderblock structure that had housed a natural foods store for quite a while but had been occupied by short-term pop-ups for the previous several months. It had location going for it, but it was hard to see how it fulfilled the other two priorities. It had a smaller footprint that our current location, it had no basement, and it was relatively boring inside. It did have one other benefit, though – it was for sale, so we could consider the idea of investing in it and being our own landlords.

We called a realtor, we talked to the bank, we got in touch with a contractor, and we starting doing some serious thinking. We made plans for how the second floor could replace the storage we were losing in the basement. We did some careful measurements and sketched some possible layouts. We talked about a renovation budget. We had an engineer come to discuss the feasibility of some changes that would make it workable. And when all that had fallen into place, we took the plunge and made an offer.

Then the hard work began. At only about 20 years old, the building was in great shape. It was square and structurally sound. The plumbing, electrical and HVAC were up to code.

Everything was in good working order, but it needed extensive renovations to be able to fit our needs and have the atmosphere we wanted. It was difficult to imagine it ever replacing our beloved space of the last 10 years. After a couple months of planning, the first job was demolition. There were walls everywhere that we didn’t want, and we needed to open up the space. That included the upper floors, which had been partitioned into offices.

We removed flooring and lighting and unnecessary electrical work. We knocked out an old bathroom and broke through a cinderblock wall. After demo came the cleanup and then the new touches: durable vinyl flooring in the store, repairs to existing walls and doorways, paint, lots of new electrical work and lighting, fire systems and more. We were sad to be giving up the exposed brick wall in our old space, so we recreated that with reclaimed brick from the old Calgary General Hospital in Bridgeland.

Once all the structural and design work was completed (a full nine months later), we concentrated on the layout of the new space. We commissioned new custom shelving to make the best use of the space, we worked on the flow of how customers would move through the store, we thought about decorating, we planned the staff and work areas in the back-of-house, and we figured out how to use the storage space that was available to us. And then lastly, we took on the exterior.

The front of the building was a little dated, with old metallic frames to hold signage and lighting. Getting rid of all that and putting up our new signs was the first step. Then replacing the front doors and lights with something more substantial and in line with our brand. Then adding new sandstone facing at the top of the building to tie in with the façade lower down. Then putting in planters and a bench by the window.

The final two steps were maybe the ones that meant the most to us. We created a custom tile mosaic for the front door and entryway. This was complicated, but it was to give the place a feeling of permanence and to replicate the stores and restaurants of long ago, when such things were common. And lastly, we renamed the building The Juniper Block after our daughter.

By April of 2022, we had already moved some of our furniture and fixtures to the new space, and we were as ready as we could be. We closed for two days and finalized the move.

It was an exciting month as we waited to see how many customers found us. We had been handing out info cards for several weeks about the new location, but the old landlords weren’t willing to leave our change of address sign on the door, so of course there were dozens of emails asking where we had gone and if we were closed for good.

Anyway, the rest is history. Two and a half years on, we’re fully settled in. Our customers know where to find us, the heating and AC work perfectly, the staff are happy, and people seem to feel that the new location has just as much character as the old one. And while it took a few months, the most important part finally fell into place: the signature smell of our spices became fully infused into the building.