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Jim Dubois and his wife, Connie, owners of Gateway Garden and Home Center, stand Thursday in front of the bulk seed bins in the store. Connie decoupaged the pictures of vegetables on the fronts of the bins in the 1970s. Gateway Garden Center will close in mid-December.

Standing near a display of repackaged bulk seeds and a PVC-pipe tomato trellis, Jim Dubois, owner of Gateway Garden and Home Center, talks Thursday about the days when his grandfather owned the store and would place a sign on the door saying people could find him under the shade tree across the street in downtown Loveland.

Jim DuBois, sporting the latest fashion in this photograph from the mid-1970s, stands in the paint section of the store that has been in the family since 1886.

LOVELAND — A corner of downtown Loveland will be a little less colorful come spring, after the closure of Gateway Garden Center in December.

Jim DuBois, the fourth-generation owner of one of the oldest businesses in Loveland, said it’s just time to scale back. He made the announcement Saturday on the store’s Facebook page.

“I’m 65. I can’t be doing what I’ve been doing. My body’s giving up,” said DuBois, who grew up in the business and took over 45 years ago.

The store at the southeast corner of Sixth Street and Garfield Avenue put almost everything on sale Monday — 50 percent off — and will sell whatever is left in an auction Dec. 16, Dubois said.

A few things won’t be discounted, though. DuBois will keep some antique scales and the safe, and he can’t quite give up entirely on his store, so he will reopen a small floor-covering business next spring at a Loveland location yet to be determined, he said.

At that store — possibly to be named Gateway Interiors — he will continue to sell hardwood flooring, carpet, vinyl and the other products that fall under the full name of the company, Gateway Garden and Home Center.

DuBois’ great-grandfather, Greg Duvaur, started the business in 1886 as Gateway Coal and Transfer at a spot along the railroad tracks near Eighth Street. The town of Loveland was only 9 years old.

“When my grandfather took over from him, they started to sell feed,” DuBois said. “Sometime in the ’30s, they changed the name to Gateway Feed and Seed.”

In 1951, DuBois’ grandfather, Jim DuBois, and father, Jim Jr., built a new store in its current location at 530 N. Garfield Ave., just a few blocks from the original business. His father added on to the building in the 1950s, but the real growth of Gateway didn’t come until after Jim DuBois III took over in 1972.

“I added more garden stuff and bought four properties around the store,” he said.

The responsibility of the family business fell suddenly on young Jim. Just two years out of high school (Loveland High Class of ’70), he was serving in the U.S. Army at Fort Knox, Ky., when his dad died at age 52.

DuBois got an early release from the Army, came home to Loveland, took over the store and married Connie, his high school sweetheart.

He began expanding the garden products that his father had added during his tenure, setting aside a large space indoors with shelves and grow lights to start seedlings.

Each day during spring and summer, he would spend three or four hours in the morning carrying pots and flats with flowers and vegetables out onto the sidewalk in front of the store. In the afternoon, a young employee would help him haul them back in.

Finally, in 1984, he built a greenhouse at the north end of the property, increasing his growing space fivefold. About six years later, he doubled the size of the greenhouse.

DuBois said he and his predecessors had to diversify and change with the times to keep the business healthy.

The store continued to sell and deliver coal up until the mid-’80s. It dropped paint and added floor coverings. It now carries pet food and is a dealer for Green Mountain grills and smokers. In 1978, DuBois took samples of soil from the Loveland area to a scientist at Colorado State University, who helped him develop Gateway Lawn and Garden Fertilizer, which still is a big seller.

“I joke that we were kind of The Home Depot before Home Depot knew they were Home Depot,” he said.

Connie DuBois explained: “Every year in the wintertime, he’d get bored and think of something else to sell.

“He’s not a good sitter-arounder,” she said with a laugh.

Other fruits of those slow winter months include the zippered plastic seed packets that DuBois fills, labels and wholesales to other garden centers and the PVC-pipe tomato trellis that he said is the only device that really works with the rambling plants.

DuBois said about 60 percent of his business comes from garden-related sales, the rest from flooring products.

“It’s kind of ironic. Last year was the best year we’ve ever had in sales,” he said.

In the scaled-back version of the business, he plans to focus on flooring but continue to sell bags of fertilizer and seed packets on the side, as well as the grills and smokers.

Dubois knew there wasn’t going to be a fifth generation running the store. All three of his children have successful careers of their own and weren’t interested in taking over Gateway, he said.

He tried for two years to sell the business, but the greenhouse companies in the area that took a look thought Gateway’s business model didn’t match theirs, Connie DuBois said.

Vacuum and sewing center to come

On Wednesday, though, Jim DuBois signed a lease with Chris Blakeman of Blakeman Vacuum and Sewing.

Blakeman will take over the main building, renovate it and open a vacuum cleaner and sewing machine sales and repair business. The company has locations in Cheyenne and Casper, Wyo., and Boulder.

“We’re opening this store because we need a bigger location … for sewing classes and events, and we needed a bigger area for storage of merchandise and repairs,” Blakeman said. “We’re excited about it.”

The greenhouse will stay for now, and probably be used for storage, DuBois said.

Although the garden center will be gone and the flooring business scaled back, the DuBoises still will have plenty on their plates.

Connie DuBois owns A Catered Affair With Connie, a catering business based at a commercial kitchen the DuBoises own in Loveland, and she also operates the food concessions at three golf courses: Loveland’s Olde Course, Cattail Creek and Windsor’s Highland Meadows.

Jim DuBois said the change hasn’t come without some anxiety.

“I haven’t been able to sleep for a couple of months now,” he said. “I wake up every night. ‘Is this what I want?’

“I’ve been doing this for so long. I’m not an absentee owner. For the past 45 years, I’ve opened at 7 or 8 every day and closed every night at 6 o’clock,” he said. The business is open six days a week, except for the spring when it’s open every day.

Even when the store was closed on Sundays during the summer, he said he’d go in and water for three to five hours.

“It’s bittersweet,” he said.

“Part of it is trust”

Bob Link, a longtime customer, said he met Jim and Connie DuBois when he was pastor at First United Methodist Church from 1978 to 1987, and the DuBois family attended the church.

Link’s late wife, Virginia, was the family gardener, he said.

“Jim gave her a good deal every time she went in,” he said. “He’d always throw in an extra plant or two.

There’s something special about the homegrown, family-owned business, he said.

“Part of it is trust. Everything he had you knew was the best,” Link said. “He was always looking out for your interest. … Everybody who came in, he knew them by name and greeted them by a handshake. He was really part of the community.

“We’re going to miss him,” Link said.

Craig Young: 970-635-3634, cyoung@reporter-herald.com, www.twitter.com/CraigYoungRH.

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