In this week’s business roundup: Botanical Concepts Garden Center in northeast Durango decided to call it quits this spring, a new cookware shop is set to open on Main Avenue, and a timeline for the reopening of The Ore House remains uncertain.
The Botanical Concepts Garden Center, located at 251 County Road 250, officially closed its doors March 30 after 10 years in business.
“I am getting on the internet to let everybody know that I have decided to shut the shop,” the center’s owner, Janine Collins, said in a video posted on Facebook in early February. “... This has been heavy on my mind for the last few months. It is a difficult decision, and I’m definitely mourning the loss of it, but I am excited about the next steps for me.”
Collins told The Durango Herald in an interview that the closure was because of a significant decline in business over the course of three years caused by nearby construction.
She said prolonged, poorly communicated road construction and misleading “road closed” messaging combined with “hostile,” restrictive traffic control that blocked customers and delivery trucks during key seasonal operating hours ultimately reduced revenue so much that she had to close the retail nursery.
She has since purchased land near Summit Reservoir, northwest of Mancos in Montezuma County, she said, and hopes to grow produce to sell to local retailers.
The full service garden center, which sold a range of plants, herbs, shrubs, trees, vines, berries, soils, specialty tools and garden art, had become a staple of the north Durango gardening community.
“I’ll miss my customers,” Collins said. “It’s a drag. But it’s onwards and upwards.”
Cookware shop Animas Apron Supply Co. is set to open in mid-August at 532 Main Ave. in Durango.
The shop, which filled the space left by Earthbound Trading Co., will sell everything a cook needs, from small gadgets like a strawberry corer to must-haves like pots, pans, cutting boards and knives, said owner Natalie Payn.
Price points will range from about $2 for small accessories to several hundred dollars for bigger-ticket items like pressure cookers and high-quality pans, she said.
She said the idea is to offer tourists and locals higher-quality cookware than what can be found at local grocery stores.
“We feel like Durango has a huge community that loves to cook and loves to eat,” Payn said. “Hopefully it’s well-received (by) people who … want to cook for themselves and … use tools that are functional and just a pleasure to use.”
Payn and her partner came to Durango from Alaska to open the business.
“We were trying to model it after a store in Alaska,” she said. “You go in there, and there’s so many little treasures, and something around every little corner. … We don’t want it to be chaotic, but we want a lot of products (and for it to be) fun to shop.”
Though some pieces will come from larger companies outside the city, like Smithey Ironware, Made In Cookware and Dreamfarm Kitchen Tools & Gadgets, sourcing items locally is important to Payn. The shop will work with a local pottery artist and a woodworker, among other local sources, she said.
“These aren’t ‘made in Japan’ souvenirs,” she said. “It’s something that is made in Durango, and it’s functional, and you can take it home and use it.”
Payn has already hired one employee ahead of the shop’s opening – an assistant manager – and has plans to hire at least two more to run the shop when it opens Aug. 12.
She also wants to hold cooking classes at the storefront, but details are still coalescing.
The Ore House, which opened in Durango in 1972, shuttered on Jan. 2, 2024, when rags with leftover oil residue caught fire, causing extensive damage to the kitchen.
William Abshagen, one of the building owners, told The Durango Herald in December 2024 that the hope was to reopen the restaurant in the summer of 2025 following a lengthy restoration process.
As of June of this year, the building at 147 E. College Dr. sat shuttered with plastic covering the windows.
Abshagen told the Herald in May that the business had been turned over to his daughter-in-law, Lindsay Abshagen. She declined to comment.
epond@durangoherald.com
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