Jun 12, 2007

Owners like the view from Mirador; Baking supply shop became sustainable community one-stopBy Nancy HillLakeOswegoReview.com

From treeless paper products to supplies for preserving food, Mirador, an 1,800-square-foot store on the corner of Southeast Division Street and 21st Avenue, offers customers an incredible range of Earth-friendly goods.

“Back in the late ’90s, we both wanted out of our corporate jobs,” says Lynn Hanrahan, who co-founded Mirador with her husband, Steve. “We would talk about ideas during our private tea ceremonies. We both wanted to earn a living doing something we believed in and that would be useful to others in the community.”

At the time, Steve Hanrahan was making whole-grain bread with freshly ground grains and felt that opening a store that sold baking supplies and health products would fulfill those criteria.

Lynn Hanrahan says, “Our idea was that one of the most sustainable things you can do is to take care of your health by eating well, so we settled on opening a store to sell products that would help people do that.”

The couple realized that a store offering baking supplies and health products alone might not bring in enough customers to make their store sustainable, so they added tea products and essential oils.

“Lynn was a massage therapist,” Steve Hanrahan says, “and so essential oils was a good fit.”

In 1999 the couple opened a 500-square-foot store Steve Hanrahan refers to as their “incubator” store on Southwest Market Street between 11th and 12th avenues. “We started small to see if an idea like this would work,” he says.

The idea took off, and a year and a half later the couple moved Mirador, which means “a window or turret with a wide view of the landscape,” into a building in Southeast Portland. “We believe strongly in community,” Lynn Hanrahan says. “And since we live in Southeast Portland, locating our business there fit our goals perfectly.”

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