While it has been closed since August 2022, renovations to the old Yard Birds shopping mall in Chehalis continue under the direction of its new owners PISTON LLC, a partnership between Douglas LeMay and the Seattle-based law firm Hillis Clark Martin & Peterson, which purchased the old mall last July.
Although LeMay has yet to announce his plans for the 305,000 square-foot, two-story building, those looking to reminisce about their time in the old mall can do so together this Tuesday, July 15, during the History Pub presentation at McMenamins Olympic Club.
The presentation — titled “The Yard Birds Family Shopping Center: From 1947 to Today” — will be delivered by Lewis County Historical Museum Executive Director Jason Mattson starting at 7 p.m. inside the Olympic Club’s theater, located 112 N. Tower Ave. in downtown Centralia.
Doors open at 6 p.m. and seating is limited. The presentation is suitable for all ages.
Tickets can be purchased at the door or ahead of the show online at https://tinyurl.com/yc498v2a. For more information, visit the Facebook event page at https://tinyurl.com/mrxaxzad.
A Lewis County landmark, 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 and featured 16 separate departments with five additional businesses leasing space inside.
Eventually, Yard Birds outgrew the space and moved to its current building between Kresky and National avenues in 1971. It 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.
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 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 — up-ending many small businesses which were leasing space inside at the time.
After nearly two years of looking for a buyer, the property was finally sold to LeMay for $2.4 million in July 2024.
For a full history of Yard Birds and more information about the old shopping mall, visit https://www.yardbirdshistory.com/timeline/.
