Wintersport, a popular longtime ski shop at the southeast corner of Division Street and Bridgeport Avenue on Spokane’s North Side, will be closing around the end of this month, says owner Darrell Perdue, who has sold the property and is retiring.

Perdue says he has sold the 3,300-square-foot building that the business occupies and underlying property at 3220 N. Division to Spokane real estate developer Harlan Douglass, and expects to close the business shortly after a ski swap that’s scheduled for late next week.

Bryan Walker, a commercial real estate agent with NAI Black who had been listing the property, said about two weeks ago that the transaction hadn’t been completed yet, but that the 70-year-old building should be available for lease shortly after the ownership change is finalized. He said he and Chris Bell, also of NAI Black, will be the leasing agents for the property.

 Perdue says he thinks the closure will create a “real void” in the Spokane-area retail market for the type of ski and board equipment sales and rentals that Wintersport offers, with just a couple of other shops of that type still operating here. However, he adds, “It was just time for me to go. I really don’t feel any remorse.”

 The Internet and online sales have created “huge competition” for brick-and-mortar stores, and although Wintersport had developed a good website of its own, walk-in business has tapered off in recent years, Perdue says. The business at times in the past had employed as many as 12 people during the peak ski season, but now is down to a skeleton crew, he says.

Perdue says he actually has been “retired pretty much for five years,” but returned after the store manager of several years left in May to start his own insurance agency. Also factoring into his decision, he says, was his wife’s recent retirement from a job with American Airlines.

Perdue says he initially sought to sell both the business and the property it occupies, but got several attractive offers for the property alone immediately upon listing it and decided just to shut down the business. He says he has sold the shop’s rental equipment to Spokane Alpine Haus, at 2925 S. Regal.

Wintersport has been operating since 1974, taking over the building that a tool rental business owned by Norman Winters had occupied and where Perdue, now 67, had worked while growing up. Winters died about 30 years ago, and Perdue says he purchased the business from Winters’ widow a few years later.

“I worked for him since the ’60s when I was too young to drive. I was in junior high, actually, riding my bicycle,” he says.

Although the business rented mostly tools, Perdue says, “There was always somebody who wanted to rent ski equipment.” He says he went with Winters to check out a Portland tool rental business that was doing well also renting ski equipment, and then decided to give it a shot.

They found a supplier willing to sell the business ski boots and bindings, and revenue began to grow from there.

“We rented tools for another 10 years or so, and then decided to get completely out of the tool business,” and to focus on skiing, updating the building and surrounding property on Division to reflect the new product mix, Perdue says.

“We started selling skis at that time. Our first famous ski line was Hart,” he says. The business hired a ski school director, began sponsoring ski clinics, renting hundreds of skis on the weekends, and advanced into selling gloves, goggles, hats, and other ski attire, he says.

“From there, we just kept getting bigger and bigger brands, and we became one of the bigger ski shops in town after a few years,” Perdue says. Many retailers sold skis for a time when its popularity began surging, but the number shrunk as skiing became more specialized, he adds.

The business began taking on various other products over the years, expanding into snowboards, wakeboards, water skis, longboards, and bicycles, and related equipment, to help bolster year-round sales, and has been using the moniker of Wintersport Ski Bike & Board in its marketing.