Arlie & Company

VENETA - Office and retail spaces at the new addition to the West Lane Shopping Center on Highway 126 are filling up, and their tenants are counting on location, location, location to help boost their business.

Linda Shreve, owner of the Blue Swan Gallery that recently opened at the northwest corner of the center, said that in her experience, it already has.

"We opened on July 1, and we did more business in two weeks than we did in three months at our old location" in Veneta's downtown area, said Shreve, who describes her roles at the gallery as "owner, artist and nag."

She rents out space to a variety of local artists whose wares run the gamut from handmade greeting cards and scrapbook supplies to jewelry to knitted and crocheted goods.

"We have only 1,500 square feet here - about a third the size of the other store - but we're making more money, which makes our artists happy," Shreve said. "And the happier they are, the more creative they are, so this is a good thing."

Her biggest wish is for better signage to pull passers-by off the highway into the center - "to make this more of a (desirable) destination instead of a place people only go if they have to have something," she said. That's something Arlie & Company, the center's owner, is working on, company spokeswoman Sadie Dressekie said.

The goal for the shopping center is twofold, Dressekie said: To give Veneta-area residents a place to buy essentials and enjoy leisure time without driving into Eugene, and to encourage high-end shops that tempt tourists to stop and patronize local businesses.

Arlie & Company began a 14,000-square-foot expansion at the center more than a year ago, to augment the dozen-plus businesses already operating there.

Ray's Food Place anchors the development, next door to Tiffany's, one of Lane County's oldest drugstores. With the new addition, the center now totals over 100,000 square feet.

The first business to move into the new space was Ixtapa Mexican Restaurant, which leases 3,000 square feet and has a seating capacity of about 120 diners. The eatery employs 13 people, manager Luis Torres said.

The remaining 8,300 square feet of space accommodates five storefronts and a nearly 3,000-square-foot courtyard with public seating and a scaled-down version of the interactive fountain in the plaza of the Eugene Water & Electric Board's headquarters near downtown Eugene.

Two of the new spaces - one with 1,800 square feet and the other 820 square feet - remain unleased, Dressekie said, "but we've had a lot of interest, everything from a coffee shop to an insurance office to a tanning salon."

Tami Sakany, president of the Fern Ridge Chamber of Commerce, which moved into the center in mid-July, said the increased activity in the newly finished portion of the shopping center does seem to be generating interest in the community.

"People are dropping in - the word is getting out," Sakany said. "The day we opened our doors, we had three people stop by in the first 10 minutes - one of them even joined the chamber."

The 150-member organization rents a 1,200-square-foot space with wood-trimmed inner offices and fabric ceiling murals reminiscent of giant upside-down umbrellas.

After years of operating "from members' kitchen tables, dining room tables and closets - we've been everywhere," Sakany said, having an official location with a paid administrative assistant and a soon-to-be-hired economic development officer is a dream come true, and "this location is a big part of what we're trying to do."

The same goes for Mark Shequin, an agent and soon-to-be manager of a new All State Real Estate office that will open in the shopping center in mid-August.

"We looked at a lot of places, and we wanted one in this area because several of our people live in this community," Shequin said.

"We'll have an 11-person office here, and we want to be a real professional presence, not just a storefront."

The newly finished addition to the shopping center cost about $1 million, Dressekie said, with the leased spaces ranging in price from $1 to $1.50 per square foot.

Arlie & Company has begun exploring the possibility of undertaking yet another expansion on the West Lane Shopping Center property.

"We're taking a look at some Class A office space, which we believe would be the first office space of that quality in the Veneta area," she said.

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