The Bon Marche

Wenatchee Valley Mall - East Wenatchee, WA

The Bon Marche expanded into the Wenatchee area by opening a store at Wenatchee Valley Mall in 2001. This store looks similar to The Bon Marche that opened in 2002 at the Valley Mall in Union Gap near Yakima.

The Wenatchee-East Wenatchee area is similar in population to the Mount Vernon-Burlington area. In both areas JC Penney and Sears had moved from downtown to separate malls. In the case of Mount Vernon-Burlington, the smaller malls built in the 1970s were in turn abandoned by the chain stores for a single, larger mall in the later 1980s. In Wenatchee, the Valley North Mall opened in the mid 1960s with JC Penney. Sears was part of the Wenatchee Valley Mall which opened in the 1970s. Unlike Mount Vernon-Burlington, the Wenatchee area did not have a newer mall built that attracted the major anchors from the earlier malls. JC Penney is still located at Valley North, although this shopping center is no longer a mall but is instead a so called power center with big box stores in addition to Penneys. The Wenatchee Valley Mall grew with the addition of Lamont's, later taken over by Gottshalks, and The Bon Marche.

The Bon never had a downtown Wenatchee store. There was a branch of another regional department store chain in downtown Wenatchee, however, Peoples. When Mervyn's purchased Peoples from Mercantile Stores in 1983, Mervyn's remodeled the newer stores but closed older stores including those in downtown Tacoma and Wenatchee.

This photograph was taken in February 2005.