By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews.com
Marc Taylor believes his fifth time will be the charm.
Taylor grew up in Yachats and four times has moved away to pursue business or family dreams.
Now, he’s back for a fifth time – and he hopes his last – to lease the former Alder Bistro restaurant at the corner of West Second and Beach streets and turn it into a store for his rock business, for artists and community events.
“This honestly, is my dream spot,” Taylor said. “This place is home. It’s my fifth time coming back to this magical place.”
The property on the city’s busiest corner is owned by Lisa Fogg of Yachats. Fogg, who also grew up in Yachats, has known Taylor since they were kids.
Her restaurant closed in October 2016 and has been up for sale. Fogg said she had offers on the site, which has a rarity in Yachats — spacious parking — but nothing attractive enough until Taylor returned to town in early July.
“It’s a great space,” she said. “It’s really nice to see that someone else can see that too.”
Until two years ago, Taylor operated a rock shop just north of Yachats at the current site of the Laughing Crab Gallery. His and his wife, Jennifer, closed that and opened a rock shop and gallery in Sisters. After a year they sold it lock, stock and barrel to a couple from Virginia.
The Taylors purchased a 38-foot recreational vehicle, gathered their sons Quentin and Michael, and started rock hounding around the western United States, hauling 2.5 tons of rock with them as they travelled. They spent last July selling rocks and minerals in the Alder’s parking lot before resuming their travels.
Jennifer Taylor works remotely as a paralegal for law firms in Florida and California.
“It was a good time, the right thing to do for my family,” Taylor says. “And now it’s time to do this.”
For the past few weeks Taylor has been selling his rocks and gems from tents set up outside the former restaurant while he works inside to get the space ready, hopefully by early August. He will keep his business name, Roadrunner Rocks.
The building is in relatively good shape, Taylor said, for being vacant for nearly three years. Taylor estimates it will take $150,000 to get the building where he wants it.
“We’ll keep plugging away and let it morph into what it will be,” he said.
Taylor is dismantling most of the food preparation area in the back and plans to make it into his lapidary space.
The kitchen area off the main dining space will become one of his two attractions for children – “mining” for gems and “digging” for dinosaur fossils. He plans to make the large bar area in the east portion of the building into a comfortable place with sofas, fireplace and tables where people can gather.
“We’re going to have a fair amount of community space,” Taylor says.
The main room of the building will be for rock, gem and mineral displays, but with room for work from other local artists. Taylor also plans to offer other artists and vendors 10-by-10 foot outside spaces to display their work; there’s already a small food cart selling hot dogs on the property.
While Taylor digs and gathers a lot of his own material, nearly 60 percent of his rocks and minerals are imported from mines in Brazil, Uruguay and Morocco, using relationships he’s established over the years.
“We can get you anything you want because of our relationships,” he said. “It’s all about relationships, especially in this business.”
By August, Taylor will have cleaned out his storage units in Eugene and plans to have 1,700 different types of minerals on display.
“We’ve figured out a way to meld passion and business,” he said. “Rocks are a $4 billion a year business in the United States. When we’re done we should be one of the top shops on the West Coast.”
