Huppin's Hi-Fi, Photo & Video, the longtime Spokane-based electronics retailer, announced today it plans to close its downtown Spokane store, at 421 W. Main, and consolidate retail operations here at its outlet on the North Side, at 8016 N. Division.

Murray Huppin, president of Huppin's, says the company plans to start an inventory sale at the downtown location March 22 and likely will close the store by mid-April.

The company plans to expand the hours of the North Side store, as well as expanding Huppins.com and continuing the OneCall online retail operation.

"We have seen our customer base shift to the north store .... We know we'll have some customers who are disappointed to lose the downtown location, but we hope they'll come see us up north," Huppin says.

The downtown store employs about 15 people, Huppin says. He says the company will retain "as many as possible" but won't offer new positions to all of those employees.

The Huppin family owns the downtown structure where the electronics store has been located for decades, but says he and his relatives haven't decided what they will do with the site.

Family owned and operated since 1908, Huppin's started as a small tailor shop in 1908 and moved into dry-goods retail and pawnbroking before its start in electronics in the 1950s. The company launched its OneCall.com store in 1994 as an early entrant into the online retail market.