INMAN – Though their sales generally occurred via word-o-mouth, Will Koehn estimates more than 300 Goertzen Homes are spread widely around Kansas today.
The stick-built, primarily ranch-style homes were constructed over the past 30-plus years on a five-acre lot on the edge of Inman and then trucked by house movers to individual home sites.
Pioneer Supply, a regional lumberyard and building supply store on the edge of the Inman city limits, grew out of the same family-owned home construction business, filling its supply needs while also serving community residents and other builders for nearly as long.
Koehn joined the company when he was 16 and bought it when he was 37. Now having reached age 68, it’s time for him to retire, so both businesses will soon close.
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“We survived one move, so I believe we’ll survive another,” Toews quipped about the latest relocation, from Third Avenue to Airport Drive. Marc Toews and David Goertzen, co-owners of Burnett’s Key Shop, at their new location, which opened this week on Airport Drive, after moving from downtown, where the business had operated for more than 80 years. Photo by Michelle Berg /Saskatoon StarPhoenix
2,970,000:
The low end of Toews’s best guess at how many keys may have been cut at the Third Avenue location during his career. He estimated employees cut between 90,000 and 130,000 keys each year over the 33 years he’s been there.
SASKATOON Burnett’s Key Shop, a staple business of downtown Saskatoon, is in the process of moving to the northwest part of the city, on Airport Drive. “It s quite difficult,” said Marc Toews, who owns part of the business with David Goertzen. They say the building was sold to new owners who had different plans for it. “At some point you realize you re going to have to move along,” said Toews. In some shape or form, Toews says the business had been in the downtown core since 1936. It stood on Third Avenue since 1967 and was on First Avenue before that.