Beyond Beads closes in Spokane Valley

A bead store named Beyond Beads Gallery that has operated for 21 years in the Spokane Valley is closing.
Owner Jody Young says she expects to shut down the store at 12019 E. Sprague on Nov. 10. It has one full-time employee and three part-time workers, besides Young.

Another bead store here with a similar name, Beyond Beads North, owned by Cindy Majeski, is continuing to operate at 7452 N. Division on Spokane's North Side.

Young says the Valley store first opened at its current location 17 years ago, moving there from smaller quarters at Eighth Avenue and Pines Road. She says she decided to close the store mainly due to the lingering effects of the economic recession. She says she had weathered prior recessions, but the most recent downturn seems to have had a more prolonged effect, and many customers have less money to spend.

"I just had to be real instead of just feeding my business," she says.

Also, a year ago, Young moved her primary residence to the Hawaiian island of Maui, where she is an artist-in-resident at the Grand Wailea resort hotel, while a store manager based here operated the Valley store. However, with the closure, she plans to continue living mostly in Hawaii while keeping a residence here.

Young creates wall hangings, art pieces, and jewelry using a raised texture beading technique. Many of her pieces also incorporate shells, coral, pearls, stone, glass, crystal, and other natural elements.

-Treva Lind

Deli east of downtown, building put up for sale

Werner and Carol Gaubinger, owners of the longtime Alpine Delicatessen east of downtown Spokane, have put the deli and the building it occupies up for sale.

The property is listed for $199,900, says Werner Gaubinger, and the deli also is for sale and would include the inventory, some equipment, and possibly some recipes. He declines to disclose the asking price for the business.

The 2,500-square-foot, single-story building, at 417 E. Third, was built in 1973 and includes a walk-in cooler and freezer. The lot on which the building sits encompasses about 7,000 square feet of space.

The Gaubingers began operating Alpine Deli in 1976 after buying then 12-year-old Horner's Meats & Deli, which had been located near Division Street and Buckeye Avenue, on the North Side. The deli has been at its current location since 1988.

At one time, Gaubinger operated import gift shops in Coeur d'Alene and Missoula, Mont., but closed them in the 1970s, he says.

Gaubinger hopes to retire soon, and says his wife has been retired for 10 years. "I have taken longer vacations to try and get used to a more leisurely lifestyle," he says.

The deli currently has about a half-dozen part-time employees.

Gene Arger, of G. Arger Real Estate Inc., is the listing agent for the property.

-Audrey Danals

Zag students launch services for laundry

Two college students have started a laundry and dry-cleaning delivery business called Dirty Dog Laundry LLC as a paid service for Gonzaga University students.

Additionally, business partners and Gonzaga juniors Dolan Patterson and Peter Blei have plans to expand off campus by securing contracts for dry-cleaning delivery to businesses near the university, Patterson says. He says the business is working to secure an agreement with the McKinstry Innovation Center, for dry-cleaning pickup and delivery services for the workers there that could add about 50 customers.

The owners also may seek to franchise the service at other Northwest universities. They are the business's only two employees.

Students who sign up for laundry plans receive either a 25-pound or 30-pound laundry bag, depending on the service they choose. Patterson and Blei then pick up the bags of dirty laundry outside of dorm rooms on Tuesdays and take them to Happy Laundry & Dry Cleaning in Spokane. Happy Laundry cleans and folds the clothes by Thursday, when Dirty Dog returns them to its clients.

For the laundry service, he says students can buy different plans that include pickup, cleaning and delivery for the academic year, monthly, or by a semester. Students can still sign up for the weekly academic-year plan, which in September started at $639, but then the rates are reduced for forfeited weeks if customers sign up later in the year.

It also offers a monthly rate of $149 and a semester plan that costs $249.

The business, which has about 20 customers so far, also provides dry-cleaning pickup and delivery to individual students on a pay-per-item basis, which isn't limited to Tuesdays.

"We've had a lot of interest from professors, although we haven't implemented that yet," he adds.

Patterson and Blei are business students in the Hogan Entrepreneurial Leadership Program, and they first got the idea from Blei's brother, who saw the business model at another small university.

-Treva Lind

Hauling company here leases new quarters

Mengoats Hauling & Recycling has leased and moved into about 2,200 square feet of floor space at 5402 E. Fourth in Spokane Valley, just south of Interstate 90.

The business, which owner Chris Ennis started last summer and previously operated out of his South Hill home, offers a service of hauling and recycling unwanted items. The items often include scrap metal, siding, appliances, furniture, electronics, yard waste, and car parts.

Ennis says the business moved to the new location in October, where it also stores trucks and vans for hauling, but it doesn't have a storefront. Ennis adds that the business provides estimates to customers and goes out to client properties to handle jobs.

Mengoats Hauling & Recycling charges based on volume, or cubic yards, with a minimum fee of $60 for clients in Spokane and Spokane Valley.

Ennis says the company will haul away individual or multiple items and sorts them for recycling, donation, or disposal. Most items are recycled, he says.

The company won't haul grand pianos or pool tables, but he says those are about the only exceptions. Its jobs have ranged from hauling a 1,000-pound safe to handling entire households abandoned by renters.
He says the business has three employees, including him and Dianna Carpenter, who helped launch it and handles its accounting work.

"We hope to bring on some employees," he adds.

Ennis says he has a goal of eventually running the business as a franchise.

The business got its name from the concept that goats can stomach most any item. "We'll dispose of anything you have, just like a goat would," Ennis adds.

-Treva Lind

Fruci buys specialty accounting practice

Fruci & Associates PS, a longtime Spokane accounting firm, says it has acquired MartinelliMick PLLC, a smaller specialty accounting firm here.

The acquisition will expand Fruci & Associates' services to include auditing for publicly traded companies and companies considering an initial public offering, says Paul M. Fruci, the firm's president, in a press release about the acquisition.

The terms of the transaction weren't disclosed.

Fruci & Associates' areas of expertise include tax preparation, litigation support, and business consulting, Fruci says.

Previously, Fruci & Associates conducted only audits for nonprofits and privately held companies.
The acquisition brings Fruci & Associates to 19 certified public accountants, including three accountants with MartinelliMick, which is now a Fruci & Associates subsidiary, Fruci says.

Fruci & Associates, which occupies 14,000 square feet of space on two floors in the Fruci Building, at 218 N. Bernard downtown, has been sharing office space with MartinelliMick since early this year.

-Mike McLean