WTIP talks with Jim Joynes following sale of Ben Franklin store in Grand Marais

When it came time to sell the Joynes Department Store and Ben Franklin in downtown Grand Marais, finding interested buyers wasn’t hard.

The challenge was in finding the ideal buyer, according to longtime store owner Jim Joynes.

“Selling to the wrong person could change the personality of our town, forever.  We felt an overwhelming pressure to uphold our family’s history, as well as a fiduciary responsibility to try to preserve our town's character,” Joynes said in a social media post Jan. 1. “Ladies and gentlemen, some of the prospective buyers and proposals we heard would curl your toes and boil your blood….think change and development, think of the types of shops you find in Niagara Falls and Wisconsin Dells.  You can agree or disagree, but we just didn’t want to be the catalyst for that kind of change.  We hoped to find someone who wanted to keep the framework of an already successful business and have the energy to make it better.  In a perfect world, it would be someone who understood our town and the challenges of doing business here.”

Joynes found exactly who he was looking for in Tyler Dean, a Grand Marais resident who completed the purchase of the store on the final day of 2021. Dean, along with his wife, Jessica, are the new owners of Joynes Department Store and Ben Franklin.

WTIP’s CJ Heithoff spoke with Jim Joynes about the sale of the family business. Audio below.