Tim Harty, The Business Times 

About 60 feet of wall is going to come down soon, and the separation of the two units in the 9,733-square-foot commercial building at 529 Bogart Lane will dissolve.

There will be one unit, one tenant, and Frame Depot will become about twice the store in size.

It’s an ambitious move during the year of Frame Depot’s 40th anniversary, but co-owner Claudine Bogart said the timing is right.

“This was always my 10-year goal was to expand and have enough business to do that,” she said.

Renovation is expected to conclude by mid-October. Then, Frame Depot will have more space for more large tables that will allow it to do more oversize art, which Bogart said the Grand Valley’s frame-shop competition can’t and/or won’t do.

“We do a lot of oversize art, and that’s gonna enable us to do that a lot better … because we’re kind of running out of space to do big things,” said Bogart, adding any frame larger than 32 inches by 40 inches, “which is pretty standard in the industry as a regular size,” is considered oversized.

Other things the expansion will bring include much more space devoted to gifts, and Bogart said Frame Depot will double the amount of items on its sales floor. A garage will become a workshop, housing a large table saw to cut more of the large frames for oversize art. And a room toward the back of that new space will become an employee break room with a kitchen.

That last item actually was the first thing Bogart mentioned, and her voice reflected the excitement about that prospect when she said, “We will have a kitchen and real break room.”

The ability to expand arrived last July when former tenant Owl’s Nest Quilters closed up shop for good, but Frame Depot didn’t seize its opportunity immediately. Bogart, who along with her mom, Lois Bogart, owns the building via their LLC, Bogart Properties, first sought another tenant for the open unit.

But about half a year passed, and one possible tenant didn’t pan out, leading Claudine Bogart to think it was time to rethink how to best utilize that space. That led to a conversation with her sister, Tammi Bogart, who along with Claudine and Lois form the trio that owns Frame Depot.

Claudine figured it was time to stop kicking the idea of expansion down the road.

“I kind of felt like my feet were to the fire,” Claudine said, “and it’s like, ‘OK, Tammy, we need to do something if we don’t want to lose this (opportunity to expand). And we’re gonna lose this for who knows how many more years that next person’s gonna be in there. And I’m like, ‘I really think it’s time that, if we want to do this, I think we need to do it now.’”

Indeed, now they’re doing it, and Claudine said it’s exciting for more than the Bogarts.

“It seems like our customers are really excited about it,” she said. “Especially being around as long as we have, we have customers from Moab to Aspen, Telluride. All over the Western Slope, people come in to get framing done.”

Claudine wishes one other person could see what’s happening at Frame Depot now: her father, Randy Bogart, who died in 2011. Randy started Frame Depot in Grand Junction in 1986 while his brother Jack Bogart founded Art Depot in 1986. And the two businesses operated separately but side by side for many years.

“I think that what my dad started will definitely continue,” Claudine said. “I think he’d be super excited, and I bet he’d be very surprised that we’re expanding. We’ve grown a lot since Dad passed away, and I think he’d be very surprised about that.”

Continuing to do the right thing

When the renovation is completed, and Frame Depot inhabits the entire building at 529 Bogart Lane, co-owner Claudine Bogart said one thing absolutely will not change.

“You know, we’ve done the right thing for 40 years,” she said. “I think people respect us, because we take care of their artwork, and we do things the right way. And if it’s not the right way, we fix it. 

“You know, we don’t cut corners, so I don’t see any of that changing.”

Staff size defies industry norm

The expansion of Frame Depot’s store may lead to the addition of an employee or two. As is, Frame Depot has nine employees, which co-owner Claudine Bogart said “is huge for our industry.

“Typically in picture framing, you have two or three, maybe four. Most most picture-framing businesses around the country are pretty small, so to have nine and to have this kind of space is very unique.”

End of the split entrances

One of the things that will go away because of the building transformation into one unit is the current foyer, where customers walked in and either turned right for the Frame Depot entrance or left to enter Owl’s Nest Quilting.

“That’s all coming down now,” Bogart said. “You’ll walk in, and it’ll just be in Frame Depot, which will be so nice.”