Laguna Café expects to move late this year

The owners of Laguna Café plan to move the South Hill restaurant to a new location at 2013 E. 29th during the first week of December. 

The restaurant currently is located at 4302 S. Regal. 

It’s newly leased space will be located in Grapetree Village on the South Hill, west of Applebee’s and next door to U.S. Health Works.

The new location will give owners Dan and Debbie Barranti an additional 1,000 square feet of space. The restaurant occupies about 1,600 square feet in its current location, where it has been operating since opening eight years ago, Dan Barranti says.

In addition to having more room, the restaurant’s drink menu will grow because Laguna Café will begin serving liquor in addition to beer and wine.

“We still want to create the café experience,” Barranti says. 

The new location also will have outdoor seating and a drive-through lane for food and coffee. 

“We’re going to continue to feature all the same things,” Barranti says.

The restaurant employs 12 to 15 people. Barranti expects the staff to increase by two or three people in the new setting.

—Kevin Blocker

Incubator to serve creative businesses

Hatch: Creative Business Incubator, a collaborative work space provider catering to artists and creative businesses, has opened in Spokane Valley. 

Hatch is leasing a total of 1,000 square feet of space, currently encompassing seven office suites, on the second floor of a building at 9612 E. Sprague. The Black Diamond bar is located on the building’s ground floor.

Jessie Swanson acts as the Hatch space’s administrator, renting suites to tenants as needed. Local artist Jennifer LaRue assists Swanson in introducing new artists to the space and coordinating events held in an event space also located there.

In addition to administering Hatch, the two operate separate businesses of their own that are located there. Swanson operates a printing company, Magicraftsman Printing Co., and LaRue sells products from FeFi, a line of women’s self-defense jewelry she invented. 

Along with the event space located there, Hatch includes a gallery area for artist showings, as well as on-site classroom and meeting spaces. Other current tenants include Terra Obscura, Creative Consignment, ARU, and Loud & Proud Entertainment.

LaRue has been involved with the Spokane art community for 30 years. 

“We’re trying to give artists a start at a reduced rate,” says LaRue. “We really want this to be a collective environment.”

Swanson says Hatch’s space has an open floor plan that can be divided into flexible business spaces, depending on a tenant’s needs.  “Artists can take a look at the space available and decide how much of it they’ll need,” he says.

Once the needed space is determined, the area is sectioned off accordingly. Swanson says the incubator usually charges 50 cents per square foot, per month, and artists renting space also share in the payment of utilities, which include Internet and electricity. “It works out to be about $50 a month for a 10-by-10 space, plus utilities,” says Swanson. 

Swanson says he sees Hatch as the start of what eventually will be a larger nonprofit organization that will bring art and art events to Spokane Valley. 

 

—LeAnn Bjerken

Leland’s Barbershop moves to new home

Leland’s Barbershop, which operated on north Wall Street in downtown Spokane for most of 57 years, says it has settled into a new permanent space at River Park Square downtown, after occupying a temporary space there for several months.

The barbershop’s new 680-square-foot space is located near the skywalk leading to the Crescent Court. The temporary space it had been occupying was next to Pottery Barn on the first floor of the shopping mall, at 808 W. Main.

Owner Claudia Kirkebo had to move the barbershop into the temporary quarters to allow for the demolition of the Saad Building at the northwest corner of Main Avenue and Wall Street and the planned construction of a new building there that Philadelphia-based national retailer Urban Outfitters will occupy.

The now-leveled Saad Building was at the east end of the mall complex, and the barbershop occupied the north end of that building, at 217 N. Wall.

The Journal reported earlier that the Urban Outfitters building will be a two-story, 10,000-square-foot structure and that it’s being developed at a total project cost of about $2 million. 

Leland Kuskey founded the barbershop in 1958 and operated it continuously in that stretch of Wall Street, except for a brief period when it had to relocated due to a fire, until selling it to Bob Moore in 1975. A woman named Donna Davidson bought it in the mid-1990s, says Kirkebo, who began working there in 2001 and bought the business from Davidson several years later.

 

—Kim Crompton

Princess-themed party venue opens

Spokane-based A Dream is a Wish Princess Parties LLC, which has been providing princess-themed private parties at customers’ locations in the Spokane area, has opened its own Princess Palace in a 1,200-square-foot space at 601 W. Maxwell just north of downtown. 

The business, which is co-owned by Destiny Johnson and her sister, Tiffany Christianson, and has been operating here for about a year, hosted a grand opening at its new party venue last month. All of its parties now will be held there.

The business employs 15 to 20 princesses, depending on bookings.

The business owners’ mother, Sylvia Christianson, who serves as party coordinator and princess assistant, says employees are all part time, usually high school or college students who work for the company on weekends. In addition to princesses, the business also employs a few men to play prince characters or super heroes like Spiderman. 

Party packages at the palace can include makeovers, dance lessons, and sing-a-longs, among other activities. Also available are party add-ons such as cakes, cupcakes, goodie bags or a custom candy buffet table. The palace is available for rent on Friday evenings, Saturdays and Sundays. 

She says her daughter, Destiny, came up with the idea for the business while finishing her nursing degree at WSU. 

“She always wanted to own her own business,” she says. “She’s very creative with decorations, costumes, and design. I think this is just something she knew she wanted to do.”

 

—LeAnn Bjerken