Aaron Barouh refers to the beginning of Gilman Village as a “happy accident.”

Back in 1972, when Issaquah’s population was about 1,000 people, and there was one traffic light in town, Ruth Mohl and her late husband, Marvin, had an idea. They started to save unwanted older buildings and move them to present-day Gilman Village. That was during the Carter years, Ruth Mohl said, when reuse of existing buildings was encouraged.

They didn’t have to go far to get the buildings — a block or two at most. Marvin Mohl, an attorney, had an interest in development — he developed the first shopping center in Issaquah, called the Hi-Lo, where Lombardi’s Italian Restaurant is now.

Barouh, who is married to one of the Mohl’s daughters, Ellen, said his father-in-law started the village on a shoestring.

“None of the banks would loan him money because they’d never seen anything like this,” Ruth Mohl said. “But he was very persuasive.”

The Mohl’s design team included landscape architect Richard Haag who suggested it would make sense to make a small town square and bring the homes in around it.

“It turned out just like he envisioned it,” Ruth Mohl said of her husband.

The village started during the ‘70s Boeing bust, when a billboard read, “Will the Last Person Leaving Seattle – Turn Out the Lights,” Barouh said. But it was good timing, because, just like with the recent great recession, there were no jobs to be found, so people started their own small business. Barouh said if ever there was a time to do it, starting a business was a means for family income, especially if the main bread winner had been with Boeing.

Most of the original business owners were women, and even today, Ruth Mohl thinks 80 percent of the village’s proprietors are women. Even her daughter, Ellen, had a restaurant called “Original Ellen’s” for many years until the couple decided to start a family.

“People used to tease my husband about all these women, but he said women were the best merchants,” Ruth Mohl said.

Barouh said the last four years have been the toughest for the Village.

“Retail has been hurting since 2008,” he said. But, it’s evolving into different uses now.

“It’s changed over the years — it’s impossible for small developments to survive on retail,” Barouh said. “We’re one of the few adaptive reuse developments in the state.”

What that change has brought is more services and professionals to the village: there is a consulting firm, a place for entrepreneurs to share office space, a communications firm and a Pilates studio, to name a few. Barouh said they typically have about 40 businesses within the village. Presently the vacancy rate is about 5 percent he said.

The tenant that has been in Gilman Village the longest is The Boarding House restaurant, which opened in 1973, the year the Mohls felt “they’d arrived,” because they had four tenants.

“People were so excited, they were lined up around the block,” Ruth Mohl said of The Boarding House. “They have customers who have been coming there all 40 years.”

The Boarding House is on its third owner, she said, but they’ve maintained all the old recipes.

“It’s just like home,” she said.

The newest tenant in the Village is The Mud House Pottery, where you can paint your own pottery. The owners are in the process of selling pottery and teaching classes, Barouh said.

“We’ve seen a lot of energy,” Barouh said. “There has been a lot of transition since the start of coming out of the recession.”

The two main periods of growth came in the early ‘70s, then the early ‘80s for the village. Gilman Village grew from east to west, with The Boarding House and Village Green Yoga on the far east end, and Hairtune anchoring the West end now.

As far as memorable experiences, there was a fire in what is now the Flat Iron Grill in 2004. Started by a cigarette, it gutted the interior. In 1993, a windstorm brought down a 20-year-old tree near the Farmhouse School, a pre-school in the village. The Farmhouse was originally the home of Lars and Henrietta Wold and their garden is still there. The tree that came down was at the edge of the garden and just missed the barn, coming to rest in the kitchen of a Greek restaurant.

“These buildings are built from old-growth timber, so they don’t come down easily,” Barouh said.

Then there was the time before there was adequate flood control for Issaquah Creek, that the parking lot flooded. They have pictures of someone kayaking through the parking lot.

Gilman Village has received numerous awards. In 1985, the Bellevue Chamber of Commerce presented the Eastside Quality of Life Award to Gilman Village for “the pleasures it gives through its rich discoveries of spaces and forms.”

Both Barouh and Mohl said it’s risky going into small business, but that’s what makes Gilman Village interesting. Ruth Mohl makes the effort to get to know every tenant in the village and is on call 24/7. She calls it her recreation.

“Everything about this place is very personal — between us and the tenants, and the tenants and their customers,” Barouh said.