Oregon Public Broadcasting

On Saturday, teenagers in Bend will get a new place to shop for clothes. A store, named ‘O Mo Mo!,’ will open in the city’s trendy Old Mill shopping district.

The store says it will sell “cheaper chic” – the ‘cheaper’ makes sense, in these economic times, of course. But why on earth is a new fashion shop opening in Bend, when the city is still reeling from the housing collapse?

Central Oregon correspondent Ethan Lindsey reports.

Actually fashion lovers in Bend now have two new places to shop. At least 50 people stormed into the new midrange department store -- Gottschalks --  last week.

A grand opening sale brought in a lot of shoppers – and many dismayed the store was already hanging Christmas decorations, before even Halloween was even over.

But many locals say the new store has a lot going for it.

For one thing, more local jobs. Gottschalks says it hired 74 locals as employees.

Steve Hendrickson was at the grand opening, and applied for a job at the store.

Steve Hendrickson: “Where I used to live in California, there’s a Gottschalks there too, where I used to shop. So I’m familiar with the store itself. Everyplace I’ve looked, nobody’s doing interviews and corporate offices aren’t letting them hire people. So, uh, it’s real tough.”

In addition to Gottschalks, there have been quite a few new, smaller retail stores opening across central Oregon in the past few months.

But why?

In September, retail sales across the country took their largest plunge in three years.

And some say the housing collapse in central Oregon has scared consumers even more.

Retail analysts and regional storeowners say the new stores in Bend are, at best, outliers.

At worst, they may be ill-fated illusions, doomed to fail.

In Gottschalks' case, the company obtained the money to build its new Bend store almost two years ago.

Bob Fabbri is the regional director of stores for Gottschalks in the Pacific Northwest.

I asked him if the company would have held off on the Bend store if it had an economic crystal ball back then.

Bob Fabbri: “Could be. Just because of what's going on. Credit out there’s tight, so that could have an affect, yes. It’s not recession-proof, but nothing right now in the world is recession proof.”

Nationally, Gottschalks is   struggling.  Revenue is down and the chain's ticker symbol just was dropped from the New York Stock Exchange because its price was too low.

Linda Cahan is a retail consultant in West Linn. She says you can’t actually tell how retail is doing in Bend, or anywhere else, by how the number of new stores.

Linda Cahan: “Now, I’m sure most of these retailers had to lease these spaces ahead of time, so the fact that they are opening during this time is what hopefully isn’t bad luck. Any retailer that opens up has to plan to ride out almost a year. I’ve shopped in Bend, there are some gorgeous, gorgeous stores in that area. But the thing is people are always curious about what’s new.”

Cahan says the good news is that the excitement over ‘what’s new’ could counteract the prevailing downward trends. But only if those downward trends are short-term.

Less than three miles north of the sparkling new department store, Duncan McGeary stands inside Pegasus Books -- his small, local comic book shop in downtown Bend.

McGeary’s shop is cluttered and crammed full of all different sorts of stuff, including action figures, books, and baseball cards.

Duncan McGeary: “Ohhhh ... It’s a little slower than it used to be the last four or five years. But we’re in a very vibrant part of downtown Bend and we’re getting a bunch more foot traffic than we used to get down here.”

Still, in the 30 minutes or so that I interviewed McGeary during the middle of the weekday, only one person came in  – and that was the FedEx guy.

Duncan McGeary: “I do have an overall feeling that there’s an awful lot of retail in Bend. You can form a mental picture of how many stores there were when the population was 20,000 and then when it was 40,000. And it just seems like the amount of space that has been dedicated to retail, to commercial retail, is just way beyond that.”

A book store down the block from McGeary closed its doors just a few months back. And McGeary says he’s already started adjusting his purchases for a possible slowdown.

But not everyone shares his pessimism. For instance, a baseball cap and hat store just opened across the street with the usual optimism.

But McGeary says its impossible to tell who his neighbors will be in a few years time.