By RACHEL HUNTER

Staff writer

St. Luke Hospital Auxiliary has been given the go-ahead to move the Shoppe to 321 E. Main St. — the former location of the Duckwall Variety Store.

“We have the green light now,” Hospital Foundation President Judy Reno told the volunteers gathered at the annual auxiliary meeting Thursday night. “We can start planning. It’s going to happen. We just have to make sure everything is legal first.”

Scottie Gound currently owns the location. Reno said he gifted the building to the hospital foundation for their use, knowing that they needed a larger space.

The Shoppe has been at its current location — 404 E. Main St. — ever since it opened in 2005. While the auxiliary is thankful for a building that they could use, the volunteers said that the building had some flaws — mostly concerning lack of available space.

But, that will be corrected in the new building. Its main room is 4,000 square feet. The back storage room is 1,200 square feet and the upper storage room is another 1,200 square feet.

“We’ll have plenty of space to fold and store items,” Reno said. “Right now, we have to fold clothing off of tables. This building will allow us to store seasonal items. I get excited just thinking about it.”

Reno said she expected to be able to announce that the deed had been signed before the end of 2012, so the donation could be used as a tax write-off. But she said it didn’t happen because of all of the other things that were happening around the holidays.

She said things were a little intense at the end of the year. They did not know what they were going to do. But, their worries ceased when the proprietor of the estate gave them his word that they would have the building at the beginning of 2013.

“He’s still going to gift it to us, so we’re good to go,” she said.

She said the Shoppe made a profit of $41,624 in 2012, a significant amount more than they have been able to raise in the past seven years. Rosemary Garrard, Auxiliary Shoppe chairman, is thrilled with the move, knowing that the new location will help the hospital just as much as it will help people in the community.

“It’s a win-win situation,” she said. “We don’t have to pay rent, the community gets some great deals and the hospital gets all of the benefit.”

Reno and Garrard expect to be able to move into the new location by May or June.

“We could probably do it sooner, but we don’t want to move when it is cold out,” Reno said. “May is a perfect time. It will be much warmer out by then, but it won’t be too warm.”

Since the new location is only 246 feet away from their current location, Reno believes they won’t have much moving expense.

Instead of using a U-Haul or volunteers’ vehicles, they plan to use what they have: shopping carts and elbow grease.

“That’s why we need the weather to be good,” she said.

“We don’t want to freeze as we’re wheeling the carts down the sidewalk.”

Garrard said they will be holding a few sales in the months before they move.

She said they do not want to move merchandise that they could just as easily sell.