D.I. will leave Ogden for new spot in Harrisville

HARRISVILLE — Deseret Industries is leaving Ogden after more than six decades for a new location in Harrisville.

The Deseret Industries at 2048 Washington Blvd., which opened in the 1940s, will have its final day of operation on Sept. 19.

The new Deseret Industries, part of the Harrisville Welfare Center, will have its grand opening Sept. 24 and 25.

The welfare center will be similar to new centers in Layton and Logan, which are also both anchored by a Deseret Industries store.

The new Harrisville store at 435 N. Wall Ave. is being stocked and furnished and will be dedicated at 7 p.m. Sept. 23 by a member of the Presiding Bishopric of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, according to Paul Spackman, president of the church's Syracuse Stake and agent stake president of the area's Deseret Industries.

"It's gorgeous," Spackman said of the new facility during an advance tour. It, like all new Deseret Industries, resembles more of a regular retail store than a thrift outlet. "It's not embarrassing to go to the D.I. (now)," he said.

While it won't be in downtown Ogden, he said he believes the new store will still be accessible to the community.

"We might serve some different clientele, but we will have the same clientele base," Spackman said, noting that the new store will be slightly smaller than the old Ogden location.

With a tight economy, he said, Deseret Industries stores are busier than ever, though they could use more public and corporate donations to meet that higher need.

Although most may see the store as offering inexpensive or mostly used merchandise, he said it has another great purpose. It will employ 110 people and transform lives by offering basic job-skill training to those in need.

"It's a training-for-life program," he said.

Mariann Dillman, 37, from Eden, is one of the employees who is helping open the new store. She said she had no self-esteem when she started working at the Ogden Deseret Industries seven months ago. "I blossomed here and went to school," she said.

Dillman, who has a learning disability, said special-needs people can prosper working at a Deseret Industries. Her proof is her high self-esteem now and that she is nearing a nursing certification.

Spackman said the Ogden Deseret Industries still has its own separate clothes and merchandise. When it closes its doors, some of its leftovers will bolster the Harrisville store, but most may end up in the LDS Church's humanitarian-services program throughout the world.

The Ogden property will be retained by the church real estate arm, and its fate is unclear.