The Web site for Lazar’s Bazar on East 13th Avenue boasts itself as “the most unique retail store in the Pacific Northwest,” and it has certainly become one of the most unique stores on 13th Avenue between Kincaid and Alder streets.
But on Feb. 5, the shop will close for demolition.
Lazar Makyadath, a Eugene resident of 36 years, runs the store. “Everybody on the street just calls me Mr. Lazar,” he said.
Makyadath grew up in New Delhi but always wanted to come to the United States. In 1974, he and his wife left India and settled in Oregon.
“I like everything about this town,” Makyadath said. “I fell in love with this small city. I also like it because there aren’t a lot of people, unlike the big city where I’m originally from.”
Makyadath runs two other shops in Eugene, a downtown Lazar’s Bazar location and Shoe-A-Holic on Willamette Street.
The campus location of Lazar’s originally opened to accompany the neighboring shop Origin 79. Makyadath’s son Priya opened Origin 79 as a high-fashion clothing store, but Makyadath said it closed because it “wasn’t profitable.”he said. 
“No college student has enough money to buy $60 T-shirts!” he said.
One of the things Makyadath enjoys about the campus location of Lazar’s is the building itself.
“It used to be a store called Campus Shoe Repairs. Bill Bowerman would come here before there was Nike and test shoes in the building,” he said.
Makyadath describes Lazar’s as a smoke shop and knick-knack store.
“We try to bring as many products in as we can to accommodate all customers,” he said. The majority o customers go to Lazar’s to purchase cigarettes, he said, but his inventory also includes a random array of products like posters, incense and pipes.
Lazar’s downtown shop at 57 West Broadway will remain open.
“The downtown store is a lot bigger, 3,000 square feet,” he said. “We also have a greater
variety of products there.”
Two of his three daughters help run the downtown store. Recently, Makyadath has had to split his time between the two locations, spending mornings and evenings at the campus store and the afternoon at his downtown shop.
Even though Lazar’s is closing next week, demolition won’t begin until Feb. 12. Makyadath plans to build a multiple-story structure to replace the old one that housed Origin 79 and Lazar’s Bazar.
“It will probably be a three-story building, but I’d like to have as many as six stories. We just don’t have the finances for that,” Makyadath said.
Two groups have already expressed interest in leasing space in the new building,
Makyadath said.
“A sandwich shop and coffee shop are probably going to be on the ground floor,” he said. “I still have a lot of spaces available, though.”
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