Dick and Sandy Ekins ran city’s oldest store for nearly 30 years

After this year’s long spring, Dick Ekins’ tomato plant stood green and tall with absolutely no fruit. It’s been an unusual year.

“I’ve always grown tomatoes, from the time I was a little boy,” he said. “But this year I’ve flunked the test.”

Dick and Sandy Ekins’ efforts haven’t always borne fruit, but the former owners of Kirkland Hardware Store helped shape the downtown of today. For many, their mom and pop store symbolized Kirkland’s small-town community for nearly 30 years.

Before it closed in 2000, the store was the oldest continuously run business on the Eastside, having opened in 1913. Kirkland Chamber of Commerce president Bill Vadino said a hardware store has operated in Kirkland since at least 1890. Today, a number of hardware stores can be found in Kirkland, but none within walking distance of the thousands of downtown

residents. Vadino said the Ekins are part of a number of family businesses that made Kirkland what it is today.

“The Woods, the Lightfeldts, the Shinstroms and the Ekins … They helped establish that,” he said.

The Ekins weren’t single-handedly responsible for any particular monument, building or organization. Instead, the pair seem to have involved themselves in everything, working together with residents on a countless number of councils, service clubs, societies and charities. It’s part of why local residents still instinctively look for Kirkland Hardware. The couple have become part of the fabric of the city.

Now retired, the Ekins are still downtown, but live in a third floor condominium. Reflecting on his old business on a recent afternoon, Dick, 80, a former city councilman and Kirkland Chamber of Commerce president, leafed through an old scrapbook of the hardware store. Seated next to him at a folding table, his wife Sandy was busy organizing a friend’s collection of stamps. She ran the store from the back, keeping the books until they hired a helper and bought a computer.

“It was done out of a shoebox, really,” she said.

Sandy, 77, also served as president for the local Rotary Club chapter, the first of several women to lead the service organization for business leaders. With their combined involvement in community service and business, the two made a formidable pair.

The couple first met at the University of Washington in 1949 at a fraternity social and were married in 1953. For several years, the Ekins lived in Seattle with Sandy working as a school teacher and Dick as a traveling sales representative for General Electric. But every time Dick visited a retailer, he found himself admiring the store and the town it served. So in 1972, they bought Kirkland Hardware and moved their home to Houghton.

A few decades ago, Kirkland’s downtown had a distinctly different feel. It supported a number of hardware, drug and grocery businesses — even a J.C. Penny’s. The Ekins closest competitor, Bryant’s Hardware, ran a whimsical part-hardware part-electronics emporium.

Every summer their store would put on a variety of community barbecues and gardening demonstrations. The traveling summer carnival would set up in a nearby parking lot.

Over time, however, many of the downtown’s businesses succumbed to the changes of a growing Eastside. Building restrictions — imposed to avoid development on the scale of Bellevue — blocked serious expansions in downtown Kirkland. Winning a seat on the City Council in 1985, Dick thought he could help downtown business owners on such issues as parking and economic development, but he often found himself a lone voice.

“Kirkland isn’t a small town anymore,” he said. “Some of our citizens want the town to stay small, but you can’t have that with 4,000 people in downtown on top of you.”

One notable exception was the recruitment of Costco. As a councilman, Dick said the big-box wholesaler would be good for Kirkland in the long run, and he threw his support behind it. Costco built its second store in Kirkland and relocated its headquarters to Totem Lake in 1987 — hence the company’s “Kirkland” label. Costco was headquartered here until 1996.

The couple’s mom and pop store closed during the city’s most recent development surge. The hope had been to keep the business in the family; their son, Randy, had successfully managed it for several years. But the Ekins didn’t own the property. When it was sold to Don Stabbert’s West Water Real Estate Services, Dick said he couldn’t afford a rent increase of nearly 300 percent. Kirkland Hardware’s final location at 424 Kirkland Avenue (which itself was once an Albertson’s supermarket) is now offices for software company Bungee Studios.

These days, Dick and Sandy Ekins spend much of their time making social calls. They recently enjoyed their 55th anniversary with an old high school classmate of Dick’s from Coeur D’Alene, Idaho. And even after years of being such a visible part of the community, they plan to be around for many more.

“We’ve had an extremely enjoyable career,” Dick said. “I’m very happy here.”