IN THE NEWS: Downtown Hillsboro celebrates two new business expansions

Downtown Hillsboro is growing. And growing. And growing.

The City’s core has seen more than two dozen businesses open or expand in the past year, according to the Hillsboro Downtown Partnership, a group which promotes and encourages downtown development.

While several businesses have set up shop in and around Main Street recently, including a new sewing shop, The Cotton Cure, and two locations for Crystal Heart Books, this past weekend was a celebration for two businesses which held grand re-openings for their storefronts.

WashCo Bikes, 137 N.E. Third Ave., officially opened the doors to its second Downtown storefront on Saturday with a special ribbon cutting ceremony.

The store has long been a place to purchase adult and children’s bicycles, as well as safety equipment. The shop has offered repairs for years, and will be able to expand its services, said Nancy Nelson, a longtime volunteer at WashCo Bikes.

The current space will become the business’ bicycle repair shop. The second space next door will be able to sell bicycles and bike accessories. The store has expanded its hours, now open seven days a week.

“We are excited to be expanding our retail store into its own space,” Nelson said. “This will give us an opportunity to add capacity on the service side, while offering a wider selection of new and revitalized products in the store.”

Down the road, a second celebration on Saturday was kicking off at Rune & Board, a Downtown Hillsboro board game store, which had also completed an expansion into a larger space.

Rune & Board, 238 S.E. Washington St., opened in 2016 offering everything from Monolopoly to Dungeons & Dragons. Nick Barnes, who owns and operates the store, says the expansion will allow the shop to offer more events, and products. The shop plans to hire more staff, including board game experts.

“This expansion will allow us to run sanctioned tournaments that require restrictions while allowing other types of gaming events to occur that appeal to the general public,” Barnes said. “We’ll also have room for added product lines in the expanded space.”

Elisa Joy Payne, the Downtown Parntership’s executive director, said the expansion of Rune & Board will be a boon for local board game enthusiasts.

“An expansion at Rune & Board’s will definitely correlate with an expansion of our personal (board game) collection,” Payne said.

See the original story on the Hillsboro Tribune.