Boise ‘treasure hunt’ furniture shop to close after 75 years. Liquidation sale begins

For 75 years, the Bench Commission in Boise has sold new and used furniture, antiques and knickknacks. But it won’t be in business for much longer.

Owner Ken Nill plans to wind it down until little to no inventory is left, and then lease out the space at 4255 Rose Hill St., the corner of Rose Hill and Roosevelt streets. The roughly 13,000-square-foot building is typically filled to the brim with dining tables, chairs, couches, lamps, bed frames, dressers, cabinets, picture frames and more.

Lately, the buy-sell-trade business has been more selective with what pieces, if any, it brings into the warehouse. The shop now has a liquidation sale, and as of Tuesday, was offering at least 20% off all items.

“Usually, you can’t hardly see the walls,” Nill told the Idaho Statesman. “Everybody said it was like a treasure hunt.”

He said the business once occupied an old Albertsons chicken coop, which was turned into an auction house before his parents bought it in the early ‘50s. It was remodeled on several occasions before being torn down for an Ada County Highway District project in the ‘80s to connect Franklin Road and Rose Hill Street. The project, which sought to widen and improve the roads, went right through what was the main section of the store.

ACHD had purchased half of the property by eminent domain, a term that refers to the government’s ability to take private property and convert it for public use. Nill’s family constructed the current building out of pumice blocks and metal in 1986 on what was left.

Nill’s mother, Maxine Nill, was born in Boise in 1916, per a 2007 obituary published in the Statesman. She nurtured the shop until Ken Nill and his brother took over. Then, Nill bought his brother out.

The family has a long history in Boise. Nill said his grandfather was a sharecropper on the Crescent Rim.

But he said his grandchildren now live out-of-state, and he has no one else to carry on the family business. Nill, 73, also admitted it’s not as profitable as it used to be.

“It’s like losing a child,” he said. “The shop has been very good to us, but I’m tired of the battle. It’s time to lease the place out. I hope it remains a retail space. It’s a great location.”

Nill hasn’t yet found a prospective tenant, but hopes to get a listing up once the warehouse is cleared out.

Michael Thomas, one of five full- and part-time employees at the shop, said the business will likely close in the next three months, once most of the inventory is sold. If any remains, he said, the shop may host an auction or sell the items at an auction elsewhere.

“It’s been a neighborhood staple,” Thomas said. “But it’s going to be gone. A lot of people that come to the store, they still come back and they’ll say, ‘My parents shopped here.’”

In addition to practical items, the shop has a number of oddities like a life-sized E.T. replica, a whaling harpoon supposedly from Nantucket, and a taxidermied hammerhead shark. There’s a piano, vintage hutches, grandfather clocks, China sets and a Bronco Billy’s Wild West show poster signed by actor Clint Eastwood, the director of “Bronco Billy,” a 1980 Western comic drama.

Nill said Eastwood rented furniture from the Bench Commission for the set in fall 1979.

Boise resident Jonathan W., who did not want his last name used, stepped into the store Tuesday afternoon looking for a small bench to place some potted plants. He’d shopped at the Bench Commission before, purposefully looking to support a locally owned business rather than a conglomerate, he said.

He told the Statesman that he liked that many of the shop’s items are pre-owned and without the markup of larger chain furniture stores. He was hoping to come back in few months to look for a dresser.

“Luckily, we don’t have an IKEA yet,” he said. “Those kind of big-box brand stores are a detriment to these kind of mom-and-pop stores. I would prefer to buy my furniture from a place like this. It’s too bad they’re closing.”

Brandon Knecht stopped in to search for a computer chair. He said he grew up in Boise and had been visiting the shop since he was a kid.

For one piece, he tried to barter with Thomas.

Nill said the shop is always open to negotiating certain prices, even now that the store’s items are significantly marked down. The liquidation sale will increase progressively over the next couple of months, he added. A sign on the front door notifies customers of the sale.

“No responsible offer will be refused,” it says.

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