By Diane de la Paz

It sounds like bad news. But look closer, and you’ll see that the imminent closure of Hands of the Hills is a good thing.

After three years running her downtown store, Theresa Mertens is about to turn Hands into a Web site, BohemianElement.com. She plans to vacate the shop by mid-August, and have her new venture up and running around Sept. 1.

The change isn’t owing to a lack of business. On a recent weekday morning, shoppers waded contentedly among European beads, Thai silk scarves, Japanese kimonos and gifts from Nepal, Burma and beyond.

Only a third of Mertens’ customers are Islanders. Most come from elsewhere: West Seattle, Bellevue, even a vanload from Marysville.

“This is a destination,” she said, for home decorators, quilters and clothing and jewelry makers around Puget Sound.

But since she spends several weeks a year traveling across Asia, and brings her wares to shows around the United States, she can’t be in her store often enough.

“It’s too hard to run a business from afar,” she said. “I don’t feel I can give my all.”

When Mertens is at home in Bothell, she has other pressing work: She’s a single mother to five children, ages 15 to 25.

She believes that doing business online-only will free her up to spend more time at home. She purchases goods from independent, indigenous artists abroad, and hopes to increase her volume of online buying and selling once she’s free of the brick-and-mortar shop.

“I’m glad to keep their art alive,” she said of the weavers and others from whom she buys textiles and other handmade items.

Mertens added that even now, weeks before her BohemianElement site is operational, she’s taking orders for the wares she’ll offer on that Web site.

Mertens is also talking with prospective buyers of Hands of the Hills. There’s been no shortage of interest in the business, though it’s located in a downtown that at least one longtime merchant calls “sleepy.”

When Islanders are in the mood for serious shopping, they often head for Bellevue Square and Factoria, said Roger Page, owner of Island Books for the past 22 years.

“There haven’t been enough retail stores to create a magnet on the Island,” he said.

But there are reasons to hope that will soon change. With the construction of apartment buildings and ground-floor retail spaces, Page said, a critical mass of shopping may well materialize by next year.

“We all have hopes that good independent retail and restaurants will show up,” he said.

Mercer Island City Manager Rich Conrad went a step further.

“Our downtown,” he said, “is in the middle of a complete renaissance.” He’s confident that the new buildings won’t go begging for retail tenants.

Terry Moreman, director of the Mercer Island Chamber of Commerce, acknowledged that “there was a lot of angst over those tall buildings,” going up around downtown. “But we were going to die if we didn’t get some new blood ? and now that they’re going in, people are getting excited about possible restaurants of different types.” Moreman added that she’s been talking with would-be retailers about where they might locate downtown.

Page, for his part, is going easy on the Pollyanna talk. The rents on existing retail spaces may be about to rise, propelled by what he expects will be higher prices for new spaces, he said.

“The more subtle thing that’s happening is that the old Mercer Island (rental) rates are going to a more modern framework,” said Page, who expects Island Books’ rent to increase 40 percent in the next year.

“At least in the short-term, that’s going to make it more difficult,” for existing Island shopkeepers, Page said.

But “there will be more people living in those apartments,” he said. “So maybe lots more people here (means) lots more business. Maybe it will all work out. But that’s unknown at the moment. This is a tricky time of transition from a sleepy retail core to maybe more people and shops and higher rents. We’ll just have to hope we don’t throw the babies out with the bathwater. We don’t want to lose the old stores we value while welcoming the new ones.”

Judy Olson, owner of the Finders gift store since 1985, knows how to run a successful Island business.

“People see things here that they don’t see in the malls,” she began. Her store is full of local artists’ creations and cottage-industry goods. And Olson provides “services that aren’t available at the mall unless you want to pay for them.”

This shopkeeper goes so far as to pick out presents for people who are too busy to browse — a service that breeds fiercely loyal customers.

“I have people who say, `I have to be somewhere in half an hour. Will you pick something out and have it ready? I trust your judgment. I’ll give you my credit-card number,”’ so the gift can be picked up in a flash.

Finders is moving to a larger space three doors down from its longtime spot, because Olson’s landlord, Ken Dayton, is remodeling the building and turning two retail spaces into three. Through the transition, Dayton “has been very fair,” Olson said. She added that several business owners have expressed interest in the new storefronts.

It doesn’t surprise her that retailers want to open in downtown Mercer Island.

“Business,” she said, “is great.”

Mertens agrees. And she says she’ll dearly miss the face-to-face interaction with her customers. But “I’m not going away,” she said. “I’m reinventing myself,” as an online presence.