Barring divine intervention, St. Bartholomew’s Thrift Shop in Poway’s Carriage Center West strip mall will close its doors for good at the end of February.

For 53 years, the volunteer-staffed resale business has raised money, up to $80,000 a year, for the ministry and charity programs of St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church in Poway.

But the church found out last month that its lease — like those of many other thrift shops in the Poway shopping center — will not be renewed when they expire early next year. The center’s owner warned tenants in early 2018 that it plans to redevelop the property, but shops like St. Bart’s have struggled to find an affordable place to relocate.

“Unless a miracle happens, we’re closing down,” said Sumner Rollings, a St. Bart’s church member and five-year volunteer who chairs the store’s relocation committee. “We’ve had a good run. But we’ll keep looking. Maybe we’ll rise again, like a phoenix.”


Next door at the Rancho Bernardo Community Presbyterian Church’s Resale Shop, longtime manager Gayle Marrett has also lost her lease and must leave by April 30. She can’t find a suitable space, either, but she hasn’t given up hope.

“We don’t know where we’re going, but we’re doing a lot of praying,” Marrett said. “The Lord will provide.”

The R.B. Community Presbyterian Church Resale Shop inside the Carriage Center West strip mall on November 1, 2019 in Poway, California. The shop is closing in April after 25 years in the center, along with most of the other center’s tenants. (Eduardo Contreras/The San Diego Union-Tribune)

Carriage Center West, located near the southeast corner of Poway Road and Carriage Road, has long been a popular attraction as Poway’s thrift store mecca. The 4.5-acre center has 10 thrift shops, along with two restaurants and a handful of service businesses. On Saturday afternoons, center workers say it can be hard to find a space in the parking lot as shoppers arrive from all over the region.


Among the center’s many fans is Poway Mayor Steve Vaus. He and his family have long enjoyed eating at Rene’s Mexican Grill & Cantina (formerly known as El Comal) in the center.

“I’m there a lot,” Vaus said. “We go there far too often and I’ve been in those thrift shops, too ... They contribute to the unique tapestry that is Poway. It would be a shame to lose them.”

Carriage Center West was built in 1974 and has been owned since 1999 by Gildred Family Properties of Rancho Santa Fe, according to county tax records. Early last year, developer Fairfield Housing began negotiations to buy Carriage Center West, along with the neighboring Poway Fun Bowl bowling alley.

Bob Manis, Poway’s director of development services, said that in early 2018 the city held a nonbinding workshop where Fairfield submitted a proposal to replace the aging buildings with a 216-unit apartment building with street-facing commercial and retail tenants.


At the meeting, city officials indicated that, if brought to a vote, they would reject the Fairfield project as too dense. After the meeting, Fairfield declined to move forward with the purchase of the properties. No new plans for the property have been submitted to the city since then, Manis said.

Carriage Center West shopping center in Poway has 10 thrift shops. The center is preparing for redevelopment and most of the shops will close in the next six months or so. (Eduardo Contreras/The San Diego Union-Tribune)

Although tenants in the center breathed a collective sigh of relief when the deal fell through last year, it wasn’t for long.

Bobby Israel, property manager for Carriage Center West, said earlier this month that zoning changes related to the Poway Road Corridor Specific Plan led the property owner to move forward with possible construction plans. The city’s 20-year Specific Plan, approved in December 2017, allows for the development of an additional 1,100 housing units along the 2.65-mile portion of Poway Road between Oak Knoll Road and Garden Road.


Israel said that in preparation for possible redevelopment, all of the center’s tenants have been shifted to short-term or month-to-month contracts.

Among these short-term tenants is Dr. Don Janiuk, who has operated an optometry shop in the center since 2005. His lease was scheduled to run through 2025 but it was recently shortened to terminate on Feb. 29, 2020. He plans to close his Poway shop and join a group practice in Rancho Bernardo.

But like St. Bart’s and R.B. Community Presbyterian, two other church-run shops at Carriage Center — The St. Michael’s St. Vincent de Paul thrift store and the St. Gabriel’s Boutique — have not been able to find any place to move.

Liz Angus, who has volunteered at the St. Bart’s shop for 29 years, said having so many thrift shops in the same location has been a boon for everyone. Even if the shops can find affordable spaces elsewhere, they won’t have the collective pull they had in the past.


“We were just a good draw for one another,” Angus said. “If you can’t find what you want at one store, you can go to the next.”

Emmy Torres, right, and Adrianna Ponce load a medicine cabinet that they purchased at the St. Bartholomew’s Thrift Shop at the Carriage Center West strip mall on November 1, 2019 in Poway, California. The shop is closing after 35 years in the shopping center, along with most of the other center’s tenants. (Eduardo Contreras/The San Diego Union-Tribune)

The St. Bart’s store got its start in 1966 as a church rummage sale. It moved into Carriage Center in 1984. In its early years, the 5,000-square-foot shop was staffed entirely by church members, most of them stay-at-home moms. Over the decades, the number of volunteers has declined and aged. Today there are 70 volunteers and several paid employees, including a full-time paid manager, two part-time drivers and a fill-in cashier on busy days, according to Cheryl Roop, who has volunteered at the store for 20 years.

Among the many charities the shop serves are San Diego Military Outreach Ministries, Interfaith Community Services and the Episcopal Refugee Network. Roop said closing the store will be hard on the volunteers who have formed long and close friendships, but the loss of income will be especially hard-felt for the charities its serves.


Over the past 25 years, the R.B. Community Presbyterian Resale Shop has expanded from 4,000 to 9,000 square feet. Marrett, the shop’s only paid employee, oversees a staff of 140 volunteers.

The Resale Shop carries much of the same merchandise as the other stores, but Marrett displays it in a way that it looks like an upscale furniture or department store. Proceeds from the Resale Shop benefit 17 ministry and education programs in Kenya, South Africa, Bolivia, Mongolia, Mexico and the U.S.

“This is a community service,” Marrett said. “We serve so many people here with quality products and treat them just as if they were buying from Nordstrom. We represent the community in a way that shows respect.”

Marrett said she tried unsuccessfully to convince the center’s property manager to allow the Resale Shop to stay past April if the church agreed to scale down to 4,000 square feet. Now she’s focused on finding a creative and affordable solution within Poway’s city limits. If all else fails, Marrett said she will open a shop on the church property in Rancho Bernardo.


“But that’s our last resort,” she said. “We want to stay in Poway. It’s been such a good clientele for us.”

Rollings said his relocation committee has spent more than eight months in a fruitless search for a new location. The church now pays $8,000 a month for rent at its current space and the best alternative they’ve been able to find in Poway is $12,000 for a building that’s 20 percent smaller. The challenge, he said, is that thrift stores are classified in Poway as “antiques” businesses, and there are only two small areas of the city zoned for that use. They have also looked in Rancho Bernardo, Escondido and the Miramar Road area with no success.

Because the land is privately owned, Vaus said the city can’t help these businesses with their leases, but the Economic Development Department might be able to rezone some properties so thrift shops can move into spaces formerly reserved for retail tenants.

“If they want a new home in Poway, maybe we can work with them on seeing to it that they’re treated like any other retail shop,” Vaus said.