Parents and Friends Inc. (PFI) is in on the move, which has brought a bright new thrift store location at 350 Main St. and a proposed locally-owned pharmacy at the old PFI location of the Furniture Annex on Cypress Street.
PFI has combined its Furniture Annex and Thrift Store into one big store in the former auto parts house between Rite Aid and CVS on Main Street. Paul Bunyan Thrift has a new paint job, is handicapped accessible and has been remodeled and upgraded to change a dark place into a very bright, open one.
“It has been a stunning transformation of the building and a perfect venue for what we and our clients do,” said Rick Moon, Executive Director of Parents and Friends. “It so happens that the Paul Bunyan Thrift Store is also celebrating 50 years of serving the developmentally disabled and the community as a whole through the store.”
PFI is keeping its headquarters on Cypress but renting the old Furniture Annex location to pharmacist Kelly Brodetsky. PFI purchased the Main Street location for about $900,000, county records show.
PFI had rented the thrift store property for over two decades; Realtor Barry Cusick owns the building. The new location is not only brighter and less crowded inside, it offers heated workspace for everyone, which thrills store employees who had to work in an inside-outside sorting area.
Community members are also excited about the return of a locally owned pharmacy, said Brodetsky, who is planning to open her second location of Mendocino Coast Pharmacy in the old Furniture Annex in December or early 2013. Fort Bragg once featured three competing local pharmacies, the last being the Rexall, which is remembered by many. Payless and Safeway stepped into the gap, now filled by CVS, Rite Aid and Safeway.
Brodetsky operates her pharmacy inside Harvest at Mendosa”s, work done mostly by her and husband Gary Brodetsky. She will add staff, including a pharmacist for the Fort Bragg site, scheduled to be open six days a week and offer home delivery.
How will she compete with the big chain pharmacies in a day when so much is automated?
“People still like the personal touch and we hope we can provide the best service,” said Brodetsky. She also hopes to sell medical products and equipment not available locally since the supply store on North Franklin went out of business.
“Besides trying to give excellent service, we have this dream of the pharmacy being a centerstone of the community again. We”d like to keep the money in this community and do what we can to help good efforts within the city,” said Brodetsky.
The former Furniture Annex will be remodeled to create the pharmacy counter and a place for medicines inside, but is a considerably smaller space than what the big stores offer.
“Our focus will be medications. We don”t really want to sell beach balls and cheap plastic toys,” she said. The new pharmacy would have the advantage of being next door to the hospital and the closest pharmacy to Fort Bragg”s medical offices and senior housing complexes.
Garage doors located in the front of the building will be replaced with commercial building front windows and siding to match the existing building. A new window and door would be added to the south side of the building. The exterior of the building is proposed to remain largely the same, and improvements would match the existing dark wood structure. A 10-inch diameter fruit tree is to remain in the parking area, and a new landscaped planter is proposed in the paved parking area.
The new Paul Bunyan features roll-up doors available on the side street and in the alley to receive donations of furniture, sundries and clothing. Scheduled furniture pickups and deliveries are still being made available, as are receipts for tax-deductible donations.
How it began
In 1955, Parents and Friends was incorporated to provide schooling for a group of local developmentally disabled children (then called retarded). Their parents refused to institutionalize them, as was the common practice then, and the schools refused to educate them, deeming them “unable to learn.” Parents and Friends started their own school, the Paul Bunyan School, and set up classes in a donated room in a local church. They then began to teach them to read, write and do math among other things and started doing yard sale and bake sale fundraisers on the weekends to support the school.
Those yard sales evolved into the Paul Bunyan Thrift Store 50 years ago, which is now newly relocated to Main Street. Those students now live in the community, volunteer their time to nonprofits like the Food Bank, and work at Safeway, Harvest, Rossi”s, Dirt Cheap, McDonalds, and many more business in the community. Some are beginning to reach retirement age. Parents and Friends now employ over 85 coastal community members with steady, non-seasonal employment in its various programs, including almost 30 disabled employees.
