The ordeal began 18 months ago for David Baas, when he learned the Kirkwood property his Roadworthy Guitar & Amp shop had occupied for 10 years was facing "some kind of work on that corner."
After scouring the market, Baas became a bittersweet beneficiary of the plans former Mayor John Fernandez has for Baas's former place of business.
With a year and a half to look, Baas signed a lease on the old Stewart's Gun Shop at 115 S. Walnut St. and drew up the blueprints himself one night — "really just a piece of graph paper and a ruler." After roughly a month of construction the shop opened in October.
"It was what they call a vanilla box when they gave it to me, and I made into a store," Baas said of the property Roadworthy now occupies.
His store now has an electric room, an acoustic room, a repair area and six private lesson studios. It practically still smells of new paint.
Former patrons of Stewart's, which was "full of antiques and curios," according to Baas, will hardly recognize the place. Even more so, customers of the old Roadworthy location will hardly recognize the store.
"This is the third time I've done this," Baas said.
He moved his business from its beginnings in a garage on Eighth and Indiana, to a shop behind Suburban lanes on North Walnut, to the corner of Kirkwood and Washington, and now to South Walnut.
"I had lots of time to think about it and think what I wanted to change and what I wanted to keep the same," Baas said of his store configuration. "It came out just the way I wanted it to."
But if Baas had started looking for property in June, the time Dana Reynolds of Ladyman's Cafe, Kyle Hawkins of Greek's Pizzeria and Joel Rekas of Shalom Center were told that they would have to vacate their properties by the end of the year, things might be different.
But, like he said, it all started for him 18 months ago.
"I knew that from the time that Jim bought this building that he had it in mind that there was going to be some kind of work done on that corner, some kind of development or improvement," Baas said.
Jim is former city councilman and developer Jim Regester, who owned the property at Kirkwood and Washington, including spaces leased by Ladyman's Cafe, Greek's Pizzeria, Roadworthy and the Shalom Center.
When Regester sold it to John Fernandez' Heartland Development Group early this year, the former mayor planned to build a five-story office building for Finelight Strategic Marketing Communications, where he is a vice president.
"Jim swore me to secrecy and told me, 'The deal is in the works, and if your business didn't depend on it then I wouldn't tell you this now, but I'm bound to,'" Baas recounted. "So I had lots of time. I started looking immediately."
Baas's new rent, he said, is "very fair with respect to the market price." But he knew from experience that small businesses take financial hits when moves and renovations become part of the business plan.
"I kept Jim's confidence until the fire at Ladyman's," Bass said of a kitchen fire last IU graduation weekend that shut Ladyman's down for three weeks. "I saw Dana and she said, 'Well, I don't want to push Jim too hard because my lease comes up for renewal at the end of the year.' And I said, 'Dana, push him as hard as you can because your lease isn't going to get renewed.'
"I felt like I had to tell her that. She was going to spend all this dough and not have anyone to pass it on to. But I had to swear her to secrecy too."
In the new Roadworthy acoustic room, where the instruments make a progression from inexpensive to expensive, the walls are lined with banjos, mandolins, guitars and bass guitars. Some of the labels — Cort, Martin, Larrivee, Simon and Patrick — are familiar names in the acoustic inventory. The Guilds are new.
In the electric room, Baas is surrounded by Paul Reed Smith and GNL electric guitars above and handmade Matchless amplifiers below.
"The heart and soul, our bread and butter, in this business is used, solid body electric guitars," said Baas. "I sell more of those than anything else, except maybe strings."
The passion of musicians is steadfast, as is Baas's understanding and his shop.
"It's a very personal thing, and musicians will seek a certain sound or a certain feel in an instrument," he said. "If they're not getting what they want from the guitar they have, they'll trade it in and get another one when they have the money.
"Of course there are some people who want to acquire as many as they can, and we like them too."
What has changed is the space and everything it connotes.
"I'd say I only brought 10-15 percent more inventory into this store," said Baas. "But it looks like there's twice as much. It's the space, I mean, there have been times when there were more people in this shop than would have fit in my other shop comfortably."
Baas said his wise-guy answer to why he chose the Walnut property is because it was available. But that's just one part.
"Ron Stanhouse, I mean I can't imagine having a better landlord," he said. "The rent is fair with respect to the market price, very fair actually. But it's still a lot more than I was paying before."
Baas said he's approaching the move as a change, but also as the next step in owning his own business.
"Fundamentally I feel good about it," he said. "I feel like this move and the expansion of my space is the next logical step in my business. We were packed in as tight as we could be in that other store."
Ideally the move will increase business revenue, but Baas said that it's too early to tell. Sales are roughly the same as this time last year.
"I think that moving here and expanding the store will help us sell more guitars because it's more comfortable and more attractive and will help people want to spend money," said Baas.
"My business plan right now really involves making the lesson program productive," he said. "The lesson program, being able to build that up, have a good flow of students. I hope that will help me balance out the additional expense, really. That plus whatever additional sales."
Elizabeth Dilts can be reached at edilts@indiana.edu.