Moon Mountain Minerals bought the building 2 doors down and is renovating its future home.

Tim Harty, The Business Times

As the owner of a business that finds value in gems and minerals, Jeremy Bergen hopes to strike gold in property ownership downtown.

Leasing the building at 338 S. Second St. in Grand Junction since buying Moon Mountain Minerals three years ago, Bergen early next year looks to move two doors down Second Street into the former Simmons Lock & Key building, which he and his wife, Jessica Bergen, bought on June 13 for $485,000, according to the Mesa County Assessor website.

The property at 322 S. Second St. includes some parking, while 338 S. Second St. has no dedicated parking. So, parking is a precious commodity in that area between Ute and Pitkin avenues that stands to become more scarce as the City of Grand Junction works to complete its mobility-hub project in that area.

That mobility hub, however, will bring bus and train passengers, plus foot traffic from a pedestrian bridge linking the Dos Rios neighborhood to downtown, practically to Moon Mountain Minerals’ new doorstep. So, Jeremy Bergen expects that will be a boon for his business and a value enhancer for the property.

The road construction that has been ongoing on First Street and Ute and Pitkin avenues has been an obstacle in the meantime, but Bergen believes patience will pay off.

“We really see the large amount of growth which is going to happen down here,” he said. “And owning a piece of property, especially commercial property in this area is in our opinion a good financial move at this point.

“We really see that this lower downtown area is really primed for kind of exponential growth in the next several years.”

The former Simmons Lock & Key building comes with some challenges. It’s 125 years old, and it sat vacant – Simmons moved to 489 1/2 28 1/2 Road in 2022 – for the three years prior to the Bergen’s purchase of it. The renovation required for Moon Mountain Minerals to inhabit it is substantial, adding more expense to the investment.

“It is one of the oldest buildings in Grand Junction, which is also what kind of drove us to kind of fall in love with that building is. There’s a lot of history with the building,” Bergen said.

There’s also a significant risk, but Bergen sees it as worth taking.

“We are not looking at the short-term investments and the short-term costs and trying to recoup our investment in five or 10 years,” he said. “We’re looking at the longer term.

“Anytime that I do anything, I always look at like five-year, 10-year, and then later on, whatever it is. In a perfect world, we would own that building, everything would be paid off in 10, 20 years or whatever. Then, when I go to retire, I just liquidate everything, and I live-on-a-beach-somewhere type of thing.

“And that’s kind of how we approach it is: Is it an expense right now? Is it a sizable expense? Yes. Is it something that we are comfortable taking on right now? Also, yes. Are we looking to immediately turn around and make a profit on that? Not necessarily. Would it be nice? Absolutely, but if we – and especially like right now as we’re going through the renovations and everything – we’re just spending money and not bringing money in on that particular building, and we’re looking at the longer term, we have-to-spend-money-to-make-money type of mindset.”

Bergen thinks the long game will be rewarding.

“I see, because of the growth that is going to happen down here, that building doubling in value in a couple of years,” Bergen said. “And at that point, that’s a great financial decision. If you can double your money in two years, I mean, anybody would probably take that chance. 

“Now, have I been wrong in the past? Oh, yeah, absolutely. But it’s a calculated risk at this point.”

Regardless of the property value, Bergen sees Moon Mountain Minerals reaping rewards in its new home. The renovation allows the Bergens to set up the store differently than the configuration at 338 S. Second St., which is a long, narrow building.

“It will be a space that is designed specifically how we envision it,” Jeremy Bergen said. “Part of buying an established business means that that business, the way it’s laid out, the way that it operates, is kind of somebody else’s vision.

“And so over the last couple of years, my wife – and I do not claim to have contributed anything to the vision of how this looks and has been laid out; it’s all my wife – she’s made a lot of changes, which have been positively received.

“And so over there (322 S. Second St.), we will have a larger retail section, which will allow kind of a more, hopefully, grander view of how the retail is laid out and how it all kind of flows together.”

He said the new location will have less storage, “so we will have to be creative on how we manage that storage, but we will have a larger retail section, which will allow us to kind of make things flow a little bit more.”

There’s also a business philosophy decision to make about inventory, display and rotation.

Do they take the luxury-brand approach of sparse offerings and open space, putting the focus on a few items? Or do they take a thrift-store approach where the store is jam-packed with everything?

“The phrase ‘less is more’ always comes to my mind,” Bergen said. “And my wife and I, we debate this on a regular basis: Do we need to have as much of this inventory out here, just kind of jammed in there to give people options, or do we shrink down the available offerings, so that people are more likely to kind of have that fear of missing out? ‘Oh, well, there’s only a couple of these left, I need to buy one of those.’ Whereas if we have 20 of them, then maybe they say, ‘Oh, there’s 20, there’ll be 20 when I come back.’ or something along those lines.”

He said it’s a balancing act with more questions to answer.

“Do you add more stuff out there? Do you lay it out differently? I don’t know the answer to that, because there is not a great answer,” Bergen said.

He also wants to keep in mind the traditional customers. Moon Mountain Minerals has regular customers in the Grand Valley. It also draws heavily on tourists.

“I think that our wide selection and variety is attractive to a lot of people who come in here, and they have said that repeatedly, that we have a great selection, great prices, that sort of stuff,” Bergen said. “So, keeping that is important.”

Bergen said he and Jessica looked at moving things around, changing the layout and orientation of things in the store, thinking that makes it feel newer.

Ultimately, they may rotate inventory in and out, so there’s always new stuff displayed.

They have a little time to decide, and whatever approach they take will show up relatively soon. Bergen thinks Moon Mountain Minerals could be open in its new location as soon as January, but given the surprises and hurdles he has encountered, he added the actual date “is a big unknown.”

More About Moon Mountain Gems

Didn’t quit their day jobs

Jeremy and Jessica Bergen own Moon Mountain Gems LLC, which does business as Moon Mountain Minerals.

They also work other full-time jobs. Jeremy teaches computer science and cybersecurity at Colorado Mesa University. Jessica is a radiologic technologist.

Jeremy said Jessica does CT scans (computed tomography).

“She’s the person that if you go in for a scan, she’s the one actually doing the scan, and then it goes to a radiologist who actually interprets the scan,” he said.

He also said he better have that right, because “she’ll flay me alive if I get this wrong.”

He knows what people tell him

The road construction that has been happening on First Street and Ute and Pitkin Avenues for much of the past year, has not been kind to Moon Mountain Minerals’ bottom line.

“Our sales are down about 30 percent year over year because of the construction,” Jeremy Bergen said. “Is that just because of construction, or is it because of the economy? Is it because people are changing spending habits? Is it because there’s a lot of variables for it?”

He doesn’t know exactly, but he said, “I know that I can directly point to several customers who have said they didn’t come in because of the construction.”

Whatever reason for shopping is fine

Bergen said Moon Mountain Minerals has a wide range of customers, but within that variety there tends to be be two groupings of people:

One, Bergen said, “is people who are interested in kind of like the geological properties, the formations, the history of those, which is why we have a lot of specimens around here, because a lot of people are wanting, like, a piece of Colorado. … They’re fascinated by the geological properties.”

The other group, he said, is interested in the metaphysical properties.

“There’s a large number of customers, significant number, which come in for the energy property of crystals and the healing-power stones and everything,” he said.

As a business, Bergen said, it’s important to try to balance the two.

“I’m not going to say that I ascribe to the metaphysical properties of crystals, like some people do, but I can still appreciate that somebody does hold those beliefs and those interests and everything, and so we want to provide whatever we can to them,” he said. “Because, well, that’s where their interest lies and what they want to participate in.”

Bergen then mentioned a third group, the “kind-of-in-the-middle people, who think “shining rocks are cool.”

“We get some of those, which is perfectly fine,” he said.