New Yard Birds building owner plans to make repairs; options considered for future use of property

Last week, PISTON LLC purchased the Yard Birds shopping mall property in Chehalis from its former owners for $2.4 million.

PISTON LLC is owned by Douglas LeMay in partnership with the Seattle-based law firm Hillis Clark Martin & Peterson.

While many have speculated about what will happen with the Lewis County landmark, with many expecting the building to be torn down so the land can be repurposed, LeMay said he isn’t leaning that way.

“We purchased the property because of the building. There are no plans to tear it down,” LeMay said in an email.

Currently, he said he is in the process of giving the property and building an in-depth cleaning in order to conduct further assessments to see the full scope of what repairs are needed.

“At this time, it’s thought that the initial repairs may take two years. During that time is when we will look for the right use for the building,” LeMay said. “Some suggestions have been car related activities, parking, storage, auction, dealerships, modular homes, theater, drive-in, community center and warehousing.”

Given the building’s size — 305,000 square feet — he said it could easily host more than one of the suggestions being considered, but only time will tell what ultimately becomes of the former Yard Birds shopping mall.

As for the large, iconic Yard Birds statue on the west side of the property, its fate will also depend on its condition.

“I haven’t really looked closely at the big Yard Bird in the parking lot, but if it is structurally sound, my thoughts are that it stays,” LeMay added.

A staple of Lewis County, Yard Birds was originally the idea of childhood friends Bill Jones and Rich Gillingham, who started a military surplus story in Centralia in 1947 called Two Yard Birds Surplus with two “sad sack” bird characters as store mascots.

By 1948, they had hired Dick Baker and expanded and moved the store north of the Chehalis city limits as they claimed it had become the largest surplus store on the West Coast.

A decade later, the building was expanded to 110,000 square feet and featured 16 separate departments with five additional businesses leasing space inside.

Eventually, Yard Birds outgrew the space and moved to its current building in 1971 between Kresky and National avenues, which has over 300,000 square feet of space and boasted sales of everything from automotive parts and tools to housewares, furniture and clothing.

A 60-foot steel and fiberglass Yard Bird statue was also erected outside of the mall both as a tourist attraction and to let those driving on Interstate 5 know where Yard Birds was, but it burned down in 1976 after Wayne Honeycut’s car caught fire underneath it.

Another large Yard Bird remains on the property’s west entrance today.

Other Yard Birds malls were opened in Olympia and Shelton, but both closed by 1995.

In 1998, Yard Birds was purchased by Darris McDaniel who had opened a Shop’n Kart location in the mall in 1990 and hoped to “to turn it into the Yard Birds of old,” as previously reported by The Chronicle.

The rise of online shopping over the next decade saw the death of many big box retailers along with retail shopping malls such as Yard Birds — a problem that worsened in 2008 with the recession.

McDaniel’s troubles were further exacerbated by multiple flooding events which damaged the building and property. In 2017, the Shop’n Kart inside Yard Birds was closed.

The Yard Birds building has been permanently closed since August 2022 after the building failed a Washington state Labor & Industries inspection and mounting unpaid utility bills led to the power in the building being cut.

After nearly two years of attempting to sell it, the property was finally sold to LeMay in July.

For a full history of Yard Birds and more information about the old shopping mall, visit https://www.yardbirdshistory.com/timeline/ .