The Original Christmas Village store is shutting its doors on Wednesday after 28 years to make way for a rustic-furniture store.
Gundrun Reinhold is “busy, busy, busy” in the final days of the 1323 Government St. store that she opened with her late husband Falk Reinhold.
At 67, Gundrun said Thursday it was time to retire.
The sale of the historic building to Victoria-based Standard Furniture Group closes at month’s end. The price was not disclosed.
It’s also the end of an era for Christmas stores downtown, which at one time numbered three. Both the Spirit of Christmas on Government Street — now the Bard and Banker Pub — and the Christmas House on Wharf Street disappeared more than a decade ago.
Reinhold said she was a “little bit sad to let everything go.” It is also an emotional time for goodbyes to customers, some of whom have been coming in since the store first opened.
The couple worked seven days a week for a quarter of a century.
Items are reduced and what’s left will go to charity.
Decorated with Christmas whimsy, the Victoria heritage-registry building features Santa Claus sitting at the edge of the roof. It is painted to look like a wrapped gift.
The Italiante-style building went up in the early 1900s. It used to be called the Romano and served as one of the city’s first moving-picture cinemas with 450 seats. Admission for early movies was 10 cents.
William D’Oyly Hamilton Rochfort and Eben Sankey designed the building. Rochfort also designed the Royal Theatre.
The downtown location with its pedestrian traffic appealed to the buyers. Parm Dodd of the Standard Furniture Group confirmed a conditional sale. His family owns Standard Furniture at 758 Cloverdale Ave., and Standard Furniture Last Call at 1652 Old Island Highway. The company also has the franchise for the adjacent Ashley Furniture Home Store on the Old Island Highway.
The Christmas Village building will open in November as a Bois & Cuir franchise, Dodd said. The Quebec firm sells rustic-themed furniture and home decor. Iron work from Anvil Island Design in Nanaimo will be among other products in 3,500 square feet of retail space.
Barnwood will line the walls to highlight the building’s vintage feel. “We are not going to do any renovations per se,” Dodd said. “We are just going to put new flooring in, paint the walls, clean it up, paint the outside of the building, have it all crisp and nice and clean.”
Santa will be removed but the beautiful exterior moulding and windows will all remain, he said. “We are going to try to keep the lustre of the building because the vintage look works for us.”
