Trimbles say long goodbye to WaterMark Corners’ friends

“It’s been an emotional month,” WaterMark Corners’ Amy Trimble said as she and mom Barb Trimble greeted customers dropping by 1500 River Drive, Moline, to bid farewell to a store that specializes in “innovative, intriguing and inspiring items.” The women and their “small but mighty staff” were making sales and sharing hugs recently at the […]

“It’s been an emotional month,” WaterMark Corners’ Amy Trimble said as she and mom Barb Trimble greeted customers dropping by 1500 River Drive, Moline, to bid farewell to a store that specializes in “innovative, intriguing and inspiring items.” The women and their “small but mighty staff” were making sales and sharing hugs recently at the landmark’s going-out-of-business sale a week after they publicly announced its closing. The community’s long goodbye to WaterMark officially began in early January when the duo made public that the store would close. But the family’s farewell began on Christmas Eve when the Trimbles gathered at WaterMark to sip wine, share stories and mark down 11,000+ curated items. The close-out sale will last until all merchandise and displays are sold. Once it closes, only its popular stationery will remain available to order on the WaterMark Corners website.

The decision to shutter WaterMark, which officially opened on Sept. 15, 1999, was both difficult and emotional, the ladies said. “As a family when we were looking at options going forward, we realized that we either needed to commit to another three to five years with WaterMark” or make a more dramatic change, Amy Trimble said. Currently, her brother Reid and father Eric run the Trimble funeral business, which Amy said “has grown tremendously over the last 10 years.” Amy and Barb have run WaterMark which, while still popular, continues to be challenged by a changing retail market.  At the same time, Trimble Pointe and its family of businesses – Trimble Funeral Home and Crematory, Worry Free Cremation Care, Veterans Funeral Care, Trimble Funeral Planning, and CityView Celebrations events center  – continues to grow.  Last year the funeral home served four times as many families as it did at its old location, Amy Trimble said. “Meeting with families takes time and energy,” she said, and those duties often fall to Reid. Business there also has “grown so much that he hasn’t had time to manage the business so we were looking at having to hire and add a position there,” she added. “At the same time, if we did commit to another three to five years here – and I mean commit as a family – then at what point would Mom not want to continue with what she’s doing and it’s a lot?” Dad Eric also plans to step back from some day-to-day business.

Retail changes play a part

Then there is that growing online marketplace. “We just had our best holiday season, but retail is changing,” Barb Trimble said. “Our average customer tends to be probably 50 and not a lot of the younger people do anything in a store. … They do everything online.” For example, post-pandemic, the store has also seen an increasing number of customers who take pictures of items in the store so they can look them up online and buy them at a lower price. “Everything you can find in our store, you can find online,” Amy Trimble acknowledged. “But you can’t find everything online easily.” She added: “The reason we were able to survive for as long as we had was because Mom and I did such a good job of curating a collection of items that people could come in and find the perfect gift for the person who has everything. You can’t go online to Amazon and do a search for, ‘I need a hostess gift for my cousin’s sister.’” Searching for those signature “innovative, intriguing and inspiring” items from around the country – and in the early days, England –  has been a labor of love, and the women say they’ll miss it. “It was kind of our mantra for all our buying,” Amy Trimble said. “It had to be innovative, it had to be intriguing and it had to be different in some way, and I think that’s what people found with us. We don’t carry a lot of things that sit around looking pretty. They’re useful.” Another constant at WaterMark is change. “We really have reinvented the store every year since we opened 25 years ago,” Amy Trimble said. That included creative efforts to bring post-pandemic foot traffic back, with mixed results. “Everything we’ve done since COVID – we’ve added the Corner Bar and we started our Weekly Birthday Celebration – every new programming thing that we’ve done has done exactly what I had hoped,” she said. “It’s increased our traffic, it’s increased our sales, but as hard as we worked, we’re still not back to pre-COVID sales.” Amy Trimble also said she is ready to take on new challenges with brother Reid. “We’ve never really been able to work together because each of our businesses had taken so much of our energy,” said Amy Trimble, who will now do the marketing and serve as director of operations for the remaining Trimble businesses. “I firmly believe that things happen the way they are supposed to happen,” she added. “I was meant to get this experience here because I’m going to take that knowledge to Trimble Pointe.” In fact, she said she is exploring getting a package liquor license and creating events and adding a wine bar at Trimble Pointe, where there is room to accommodate wine pairings, full-on wine tastings and wine dinners. 

What’s next for WaterMark?

While Watermark is moving out of the building, the Trimbles say they intend to keep the property and the once-derelict buildings they restored. “We want to find a tenant for this space,” Amy Trimble said. “We made an investment in this property and in downtown Moline, and at this point, we want to continue that by owning the building.” The Trimbles are well aware of the property’s importance to the city, the community and the businesses and offices which occupy its top floors. “It’s a condo situation. They own their space and we own the rest of these two buildings, and we just recently purchased a third building from Tom Grunewald,” Amy Trimble said. “I would hope that all will have trust that we will find the right tenant,” she said of the property’s stakeholders. “Ideally it needs to be someone who is of interest to both locals and visitors.” She added: “You really want to have a business that will attract both because of the location and nearness to the bridge.” That proximity to the river and the lure of the John Deere Pavilion bring scores of riverboat passengers to the next-door John Deere Commons each year. As a building owner, Amy Trimble also hopes to keep her spots on Moline Centre Main Street Commission and the Downtown Landing Special Service Area board.  Since the mother-daughter team posted a video for Facebook fans on Dec. 26, 2023, about the closing, leaders of those groups have been reaching out. “Beth Lagomarcino was one of the first people in on Thursday after we reopened after we announced,” Amy Trimble said. “She gave me a teary hug because we’ve had every holiday open house together since we opened in 1999. It started with us and Lago’s (Lagomarcino’s) and we had Stackhouse Florist and Wilson House Stationers and so we ran a trolley between the four of us.” Moline champion Barb Sandberg also reached out to the Trimbles. “Originally these two corner buildings were slated to be parking lots for The Mark, and Barb Sandberg and the (Moline) Preservation Society lobbied and saved them from being torn down,” Amy Trimble said. “She’s the reason that we even have a building.” The Trimbles lauded both Blackhawk Builders and Architect Fred Ebelin for creating the unique spaces, themes and connecting arches that became a signature of WaterMark Corners. “We’ve always surrounded ourselves with really good people that help us grow our ideas and take things to another level,” Amy Trimble said.