Roadside Shops coming to Broadway in Sonoma

Fat Pilgrim owner expanding site to add new shops|

The Fat Pilgrim property on lower Broadway will reopen this summer as Sonoma Roadside Shops. There will be multiple businesses at the site, including two shops, a tasting room, restaurant gardens and parking spaces for 22 cars, according to owner Craig Miller.

Miller’s furniture and accessory store, Harvest Home, will leave its longtime digs at 107 W. Napa St. this spring after 18 years, and join its sister property Fat Pilgrim at the Broadway site.

Miller started Harvest Home Stores in San Francisco 26 years ago. He opened his second Harvest Home store in Sonoma, followed by outlets in Menlo Park and Los Altos. At one point, eight of the stores dotted the Bar Area.

He opened Fat Pilgrim five years ago, envisioning it as a tourist stop. Instead, he says locals account for the majority of his business. He works with local artisans and visits gift shows for the bulk of the merchandise. He also heads to Vermont and New Hampshire every two years to fill a truck with antique discoveries like the weathered barn doors that have become increasingly popular.

Miller and his partner Tim Farfan also own the building on the northwest corner of the Plaza that houses both the Girl and the Fig restaurant and the 16-room Sonoma Hotel. Farfan manages the Hotel.

Miller has lived in Sonoma full time for more than 15 years. He and Farfan bought the old La Brenta property on East Napa Street when sculptor Marian Brackenridge died. The house was built by the Duhring family in 1892. “Saving and restoring the house was our first big project in town,” said Miller.

The 1.5 acre lot at 20820 Broadway that will house Sonoma Roadside is currently knee-deep in mud and lumber. The 2,600-square-foot building addition, the beams of which were raised earlier this week, will house both Fat Pilgrim and Harvest Home. The new tasting room, whose tenant should be announced next month, will be in a small separate 500-square-foot building.

At the back of the property, the gardens of the Girl and the Fig restaurant have been in place for the past year and Paul Rozanski’s landscape design and construction company, Rozanski Designs, occupies the 900-square-foot farmhouse behind the store.

Fat Pilgrim has been closed since last May. In the month prior to Harvest’s Home’s move down Broadway, Miller expects to hold a large moving sale.

He hopes to have all the storefronts and tasting room up and running by early summer.

Miller chose the label “Sonoma Roadside” to describe the collection of unique Sonoma-grown businesses that will occupy the site.

“Back in the 1960s, the property used to be an old Jackpot gas station,” said Miller. “Our goal is to evoke that mid-century roadside feel.”

Email Lorna at lorna.sheridan@sonomanews.com.

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