A banner announces the new tenant of the space most recently occupied by the Teen Challenge Superthrift Store on Second Avenue SE.
Another non-profit organization will take over the downtown Albany location vacated this summer when the Teen Challenge Superthrift moved to Pacific Boulevard.
The property at 310 Second Ave. SE has been leased by Furniture Share, which will have a grand opening at its new location on Saturday, Aug. 8.
I noticed the change on a bike ride last week. Through the windows I could see the store at the corner of Second and Montgomery Street was filled with used furniture, and the exterior had been painted.
Furniture Share moved from Corvallis to 4450 Marion St. SE in Albany in 2021. It provides furniture, household essentials, and food to families in need in Linn, Benton, Lincoln, Marion, and Lane counties.
The Second Avenue property, including the store of more than 12,000 square feet, is owned by First Baptist Church of Albany. Furniture Share is leasing it to launch its thrift store and donation center.
What’s the point of the store? Michelle Robinson, the executive director of Furniture Share, explained in an email on Friday:
“The purpose of the thrift store is to create a sustainable source of funding that will help us expand our mission while increasing our environmental impact through landfill diversion. Every purchase will help support our programs that provide beds, furniture, household essentials, and healthy food boxes to children, families, veterans, and individuals experiencing furniture poverty and food insecurity.
“Our goal is that by the end of our first year of operating the thrift store, we will generate enough revenue to hire an additional driver and driver’s assistant. This will allow us to put our second truck into service, reduce client wait times, collect more donated furniture from the community, and keep even more usable furniture out of the landfill.
“Our client services and furniture distribution operations will continue to operate from our Marion Street location for now. In the future, our vision is to bring our offices, client services, and the thrift store together under one roof to better serve our community.”
The Aug. 8 grand opening will take place from 10 to 6.
The building, by the way, once was one of the downtown Albany car dealerships, all of them gone or moved in the decades since. In the 1960s and ’70s, you could buy General Motors cars and trucks there, first from Harris-Tunison and then from Heritage Motors, according to the newspaper ads I looked up in the online archives of Newspapers.com.
Times change. And anyway, I guess families and especially children in desperate need of beds and chairs are better served by this than by Pontiac Tempests and Oldsmobile 98s, as appealing as those models might have been in 1961. (hh)
Here Shadow Man is looking at the new paint job on the corner of Second and Montgomery Street on Thursday evening.
This is what the corner looked like on July 18. The space was still vacant then.
I thought Stoddard on Lyon was the GM / Chevrolet dealer in Albany in the 1960s and 70s. Maybe this dealership on Montgomery, a little off the main drag, was used vehicles. In any case, a very good use of an empty building.
The auto dealer was Harris-Tunison, which sold Oldsmobile, Pontiac, Cadillac, and maybe GM trucks. They also had a used car lot on Main and Pacific blvd.
And before just Stoddard it was Stoddard-Frink.
In 1979 we bought a T-Top Cutlas Calais (80HP) diesel from Heritage Motors there.
Just over $ 10,000 brand new. Everyone wondered how we would spend that much on car.