{"id":23154,"date":"2025-03-13T05:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-03-13T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/durango-ski-barn-to-close-historic-north-main-avenue-location\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T04:27:35","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T04:27:35","slug":"durango-ski-barn-to-close-historic-north-main-avenue-location","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/durango-ski-barn-to-close-historic-north-main-avenue-location\/","title":{"rendered":"Durango Ski Barn to close historic north Main Avenue location"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Ski
Ski Barn owner Bill Brown describes some of the new features on ski boots Thursday that he can now talk about with customers during Zoom call fittings. (Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Ski Barn will close its original location of 53 years on north Main Avenue in Durango at the end of the ski season as the business copes with declining patronage and a poor winter.<\/p>\n

The 4,800-square-foot retail space at 3533 Main Ave., along with a 16-stall parking lot and a two-bedroom home, is on the market for $1.9 million<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The business is not closing, owner Bill Brown stressed, but it is downsizing from two locations into one. Ski Barn will continue to operate out of its south location, at 1316 Main Ave. Brown will lay off a third to half of his employees as the business consolidates.<\/p>\n

Brown opened the second location during the COVID-19 pandemic, when demand for outdoor recreation equipment soared.<\/p>\n

\u201cTwo years ago, the numbers dropped. And then last year the numbers dropped. And then, of course, this year, the numbers dropped because of the snow,\u201d Brown said.<\/p>\n

Although the north location is the historic Ski Barn, it has limited parking, and a left-hand turn to head north to the mountains means crossing two active lanes of traffic. The south location has better parking and easier access, and for those reasons it makes sense to shutter the north store, Brown explained.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s really hard to be the guy that\u2019s going to shut it down,\u201d said Brown, who started working at the north shop at age 18 long before he was a partial owner.<\/p>\n

Brown said he\u2019s having more success with Denver Ski Co<\/a>., a shop he opened in Denver in November. As REI moves toward its Durango grand opening later this year,<\/a> Brown said the competition will make things even harder for Ski Barn \u2013 and he\u2019s trying to take the competition to the co-op\u2019s far larger Denver market.<\/p>\n

Ski Barn\u2019s north location will have a \u201cwe don\u2019t want to move it\u201d sale as the business begins the consolidation process. Brown expects the north store to close for good at the end of April.<\/p>\n

rschafir@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Business will continue to operate south storefront at Crossroads Center<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23155,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[378,431,2532,28],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-23154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-alpine-skiing","tag-business-general","tag-business-and-finance","tag-headlines"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23154"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23154\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77996,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23154\/revisions\/77996"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23154"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=23154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}