To get away with a 1-ton safe on Saturday night, a floor was reinforced with extra beams, door frames and drywall were removed and six guys with a dolly-like device gave it a good shove out the back of a former jewelry store where it had once protected diamond rings and bracelets from burglars.
This heist was done with the blessing of property owner, Bob Griffith, who agreed to give it away to free floor space for his tenant and the store’s current occupant, No Place Like Home, a design and gift shop at 822 Main Ave.
Because the safe had been so entrenched, previous occupants, such as an AT&T dealer and a gallery, used it as shelving for cellphones and for the safekeeping of art.
The double-door Meilink Steel Safe is a vintage security precaution anywhere from 40 to 70 years old, Griffith estimated. On Sunday morning, it left Durango on the back of a flatbed truck as an artifact of downtown history.
When the safe first came to town in 1987, downtown was known more for paint stores, optometrists and dress shops than today’s scene of gourmet restaurants, gift shops and art galleries.
It was not taken for granted that Durango could get by on tourism alone.
When Griffith bought McKnight’s Jewelry in 1977, the shop also doubled as a sporting-goods store, selling skis in the back.
The store was then the only competition for Gardenswartz sporting goods, Griffith recalled.
As a skier himself, Griffith thought he would eventually phase out the jewelry. “I knew the sporting goods,” Griffith said. “I was looking for location more than anything.”
As it turned out, Griffith found that he preferred selling jewelry and eventually phased out the skis.
McKnight’s Jewelry was originally located where Cross Fit Durango gym at 846 Main Ave. is now. There are still black diamonds above the door.
When a bigger retail space opened down the block in 1987, Griffith moved his jewelry shop to 822 Main Ave., which unlike his former location, did not have a walk-in vault.
Because insurance companies require jewelers to have safes, Griffith found a bank in Dolores that needed to unload its safe because it was remodeling.
Model Tire brought it to Durango on a truck.
Griffith knocked out the back wall to move in a safe that is 54 inches wide and 74 inches tall. The floor was also reinforced with wooden beams.
Every night after closing, jewelry would be put away and retrieved the next morning before opening. The safe has a combination lock and its steel walls are rated to protect against blow torches and fire.
Gathering up the jewelry every night is “good because you monitor your inventory that way, too,” Griffith said. “‘Did somebody sell that ring? I hope so because it’s not here.’”
Griffith liquidated the business in 2007 and turned to property management. He tried selling it on Craigslist but had no luck so Griffith offered the safe to his tenants as part of their leased space.
If any tenant could find anyone interested in it, Griffith would let them have it as long they agreed to pay for the removal and moving expenses.
About three weeks ago, Ryan Lowe, manager of the Ore House restaurant, came for a drink at the White Dragon Good Feelings Tea Room, which shares an adjoining space with No Place Like Home.
Michael Thunder, who manages the tea shop, is married to Deborah Demme, who manages No Place Like Home. Thunder and Lowe have been working on a deal to sell Thunder’s tea at the Ore House.
“We started a relationship,” Lowe said. “We’re both really into food. I came in one day to drink some tea and say ‘hi.’ He was like, ‘Hey, do you want a safe?’
”I figured it would be a little one. He smirked and said, ‘Hey, come check this thing out.’
“I made a couple of phone calls and three weeks later, here we are,” Lowe said.
The hardest part of the removal was having to spin it on a ball bearing to get it around a corner. The floor did creak a little bit.
Otherwise, “that thing just squeezed its way out,” Lowe said.
Fittingly, Lowe said his family wanted the antique safe as a cabinet for its machine shop in Dolores.
“They’re taking it back home where it came from.”
jhaug@durangoherald.com
