by MATTHEW NASH
Sequim Gazette
After a year in limbo, Sequim’s grain elevator now belongs to its neighbor.
Linda “Candy” Diesen, owner of Tootsie’s, purchased the property at 531 W. Washington St. on March 13 at a trustee’s sale in the Clallam County Courthouse. Included in the sale are the Clallam Co-Op grain elevator and the former El Cazador restaurant.
“It’s an exciting adventure for us,” Diesen said. “I’m excited to own a piece of Sequim history.”
Her plan for the building is to rent the restaurant portion to her former tenants Baja Cantina. Diesen owned the building at 820 W. Washington St., which burned down on May 19, 2014, due to an electrical fire in the attic, fire officials said. It housed Baja Cantina and Sequim Consignment Co.
“We’ve got our work cut out for us,” Diesen said. “Our wishful plans are to have a soft opening around May 1 before Cinco de Mayo and the Irrigation Festival.”
There are no changes planned for Tootsie’s or the Sequim Consignment Co., she said.
“There’s not enough room for the consignment store,” Diesen said. “That would have been wonderful.”
Brian Barrick, owner of Sequim Consignment Co. and Diesen’s partner, moved his business to the former Hollywood Video at 755 W. Washington St. Suite D.
The former El Cazador space offers 5,690 square feet with about 1,500 square feet that Diesen is considering to open for a tenant next to Baja Cantina.
Diesen said her decision to look into purchasing the property came to her shortly after the fire.
“There was a lot of patience involved,” she said. “At one point we just backed away and it didn’t look like we were going to be able to do it, but it always works out for the good of all if you have some patience. If you’re going through something like loss, you don’t want to push hard on something because you don’t know the next step.”
Purchase agreement
El Cazador closed March 3, 2014, after 33 years in business due to declining revenues, said Gary Morgan, accountant for the restaurant’s former owner Hilda Rodriguez.
The property first went to public auction on April 27, 2014, but was continued by Whidbey Island Bank, formerly Heritage Bank, several times over the past year.
Diesen purchased the building for $353,482.
Bill Foster, the estate’s trustee with Hutchison & Foster, said Diesen was the only person present interested in bidding in the sale.
Louie Rychlik who led the “Save the Elevator” campaign with members of the Museum & Arts Center in the Sequim-Dungeness Valley said he attended all of the trustee sales except for the March 13 sale because he didn’t receive or see any notification about it. Rychlik said he just learned of the sale on Monday and that prior he called Morgan, Foster and representatives with the bank multiple times in the past year to inquire about purchasing it.
“We didn’t know what was going on,” he said.
In 2014, the building was assessed by the Clallam County Assessor’s Office at $865,439.
Rodriguez purchased the grain elevator under the name EC
Sequim Properties LLC and at one point owed more than $912,000 on the property’s mortgage, according to documents from the Clallam County Auditor’s Office. She first leased the property in 1988 with Arturo Briseno.
In a biography of the El Cazador in Oak Harbor for the Oak Harbor Chamber of Commerce in May 2012, Rodriguez and her late husband Aurelio Rodriguez Sr., were said to have run restaurants in Oak Harbor, Sequim and Burlington until the economic recession led them to file Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2009. Rodriguez’s family now runs/owns the Oak Harbor restaurant.
The Burlington restaurant closed in the summer of 2014, said a representative of the Burlington Chamber of Commerce.
Foster said Rodriguez filed another bankruptcy claim in December 2014, but it was denied.
History of the elevator
The grain elevator and property have a storied history in Sequim.
According to research by Kathy Sievert and Mark Couhig, before the elevator towered over Sequim, a lettuce shed was constructed by the Peninsula Grain company next to the former train tracks.
In the 1920s, local farmers stored their produce in the shed prior to shipment on the train but the business closed and in 1935 Cecil Dawley purchased the building.
He operated a feed and farm machinery store through 1941 and leased both the business and site to the Clallam Co-operative Association who purchased the building in 1945 and added the vertical addition to operate the new grain elevator and silos.
In the 1950s and 1960s Sequim farmers began raising seed for several vegetables. Several farmers began growing a high-quality grass seed for golf courses in the late 1960s and founded the Dungeness Agricultural Supply. They bought the elevator in 1969 and added a garden and farming supply retail store to its other operations.
In 1977, Eugene and Dorothy Saxton bought the elevator after farming operations ceased and subdivided it into Landmark Mall, now Serenity Square. El Cazador moved into the space four years later. The grain elevator now houses Internet broadcasters.
