Corrick's in downtown Santa Rosa turns 100

In the weeks before their 1977 marriage, Ken Pedersen and Barbara Sloat saw firsthand how gift-givers turned to Corrick’s stationery and gift store in downtown Santa Rosa.

“Their delivery van showed up once or twice a day loaded with gold Corrick’s boxes” and dropped off the packages at the Sloat family home, recalled Pedersen, a co-owner at Pedersen’s Furniture. The handsome gift boxes contained Lenox china, Waterford crystal and Old Master silver pieces.

For decades, shoppers and business people have turned to Corrick’s, one of the city’s oldest family-owned retailers. This fall the Fourth Street store is celebrating its 100th anniversary, a longevity attributed in part to its ability to adapt to changing consumer tastes.

Corrick’s story goes back to a time “when downtown was the only place” to shop, said Santa Rosa Mayor John Sawyer. Those golden days not only preceded the Internet but also the rise of regional shopping malls a half century ago.

“There are so few of those businesses left,” said Sawyer, whose family for 65 years ran Sawyer’s News on Fourth Street. Reaching the century mark is a testament to Corrick’s ability “to remain relevant” to shoppers, he said.

Excluding the holiday season, the lion’s share of Corrick’s business is centered on stationery items, office supplies and greeting cards, said Keven Brown, the fourth generation of the family to run the store. But the business, which employs 16 workers, is best understood as “multiple stores within a store,” with separate departments for china and crystal, decorative items, locally produced art, children’s books and games, art supplies and a range of gift products.

With literally thousands of separate items from hundreds of vendors, Corrick’s remains a place to get a single sheet of carbon paper, an order of wedding invitations, a Robert Janover photo calendar, a handmade jewelry box, a Moleskine journal, a piece of Swarovski jewelry, a masquerade mask Christmas ornament, an umbrella printed with Degas ballet dancers or a hand-carved glass vessel by a local artist.

“To be relevant in this day you have to be unique,” said Brown, who operates the store with his wife, Jeri Yamashiro Brown.

National retailers sell vast quantities of the most popular goods, he said, but Corrick’s works by selling small numbers of a great many separate items.

And some of the store’s biggest fans are those who came to Sonoma County in adulthood.

“We remind them of a shop that existed in their community when they were growing up that no longer is there,” Brown said.

Only a handful of locally owned companies have surpassed 100 years in the county. In downtown Santa Rosa, such businesses include Pedersen’s on Fifth Street, which began in 1892, and E.R. Sawyer Jewelers on Fourth, which dates from 1897.

Only 3 percent of family businesses in the United States survive to the fourth generation or beyond, according to the Family Business Institute, a North Carolina-based consulting firm.

The challenges for such companies over the decades can include changes in products, technology and consumer tastes, said Jonathan Coe, president and CEO of the Santa Rosa Chamber of Commerce.

“It’s truly remarkable to have a family that is able to be successful over multiple generations,” he said.

Longtime Santa Rosans such as Sawyer and Pedersen still recall childhood years when Corrick’s and other downtown shops gaily decorated Fourth Street for the Christmas season. In those days the stationery store was located at 537 Fourth St., west of Mendocino Avenue.

A 1955 newspaper story on the opening at that new location featured photos of Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Rae Corrick, who had founded the business in 1915, as well as of their daughter Marjorie Brown and her husband Kenneth Brown. Kenneth Brown, a former Press Democrat circulation manager, left the newspaper to manage Corrick’s in the 1940s.

The store remained at that location for 18 years. Its second-story office was where Keven Brown as a boy stood and watched the annual Rose Parade pass by.

But Corrick’s and downtown were soon to be transformed. The reshaping began in 1962 with the opening of the Coddingtown shopping center in west Santa Rosa and took on new urgency when two earthquakes shook the city on Oct. 1, 1969.

The earthquakes forced the replacement or strengthening of scores of downtown buildings, and led to the development of Courthouse Square and, eventually, the 1982 opening of the Santa Rosa Plaza shopping center.

In the midst of the downtown redevelopment, Corrick’s relocated in 1973 to its present location at 637 Fourth St., a former bank building that still has a large vault. This time, the news story of the move included photos of Kenneth Brown and his son, Corrick Brown, who was managing the store and also serving as conductor of the Santa Rosa Symphony.

The years that followed saw the closing of such key downtown retailers as the White House and Rosenberg’s department stores and Mailer-Frey Hardware, as well as the departure of Hardistry’s Homewares to a new location in east Santa Rosa.

Those businesses that remained need to be constantly adapting and improving, said Doug Van Dyke, who owns E.R. Sawyer Jewelers on Fourth Street with his wife, Ame.

“It doesn’t get easier just because you get older,” Van Dyke said.

Part of the effort involves building connections with the greater community, he said.

Such ties have long been a part of Corrick’s. Corrick Brown is widely credited for the blossoming of the Santa Rosa Symphony during his 38 years as conductor and musical director, until his retirement in 1995.

The dual roles of conductor and business owner served him well, he said recently. One of his former instructors once told him, “You’re so lucky not to have to be dependent on being a musician.”

Under their direction, Keven and Jeri Brown in the past decade looked for new ways to attract shoppers to the store. Over five years ago they agreed to open a gallery in Corrick’s with art from members of Sonoma County Art Trails, a local group best known for its annual artist open house weekends.

Corrick’s now displays the works of about 30 local artists, including painters, glass designers and potters.

Each month the store hosts a “First Friday” meet the artist opening. The events are done in conjunction with My Daughter the Framer, a separate framing business that has been located with Corrick’s for about three years. And the gatherings now benefit local nonprofit groups, including Pepperwood Preserve for the Dec. 4 opening.

Over the holidays, Corrick’s also will host a four-hand piano recital on Dec. 5 by Corrick Brown and his wife Norma.

In recent years the rise of Wine Country tourism and the success of the nearby Russian River Brewery has helped bring new shoppers to Corrick’s, Keven Brown said. And both the visitors and the county’s residents are looking for unique, locally made artwork and other items.

“They want to take something from Sonoma County,” he said. “They want something that reflects the area.”

Keven Brown voiced optimism about downtown’s future. He suggested that the Museum on the Square office project, the planned move of the Chamber of Commerce to Old Courthouse Square and the city’s goal of rebuilding the square within the next year all will help bring more people to the city center.

For the Browns, talk of Corrick’s inevitably leads to reflections on the ties they’ve made over the years.

Keven and Jeri Brown’s daughter Mikayla, 14, was first allowed to operate a cash register at age 10. A fourth-generation Santa Rosa High Panther, she said Corrick’s matters to her “because the employees are like family.”

Her mother recalled memories of carrying her daughter as an infant in a front pack through the store and of keeping her in a crib in the office.

For both customers and employees, said Jeri Brown, “they’ve seen Mikayla grow up here.”

You can reach Staff Writer Robert Digitale at 521-5285 or robert.digitale@pressdemocrat.com. ?On Twitter @rdigit