This new game store has monthly tournaments and a bank vault you can rent for parties

For some couples, vacation time is best spent unwinding at a beachside resort or trekking through a rainforest. Jan and Chad Martinell spend their vacation time searching for tabletop game stores.

“We’ve been married (for) about 15 years,” Jan Martinell said. “We just had this pile of notes about what we would like in the game store.”

The Martinells moved to Enumclaw about two years ago and recently opened Cole Street Game Vault at 1605 Cole St. They had the grand opening for their 3,000 square-foot game store on Nov. 26.

The store offers a plethora of tabletop games such as Fantastic Factories, Gizmos and Bargain Quest. Themes range from adventure to horror, and there are age-specific games. The store also features games from Pacific Northwest designers.

Jan Martinell, who owns Cole Street Game Vault with her husband Chad, stocks the shelves on Friday night in downtown Enumclaw. The store features hundreds of board games and card games for all ages and abilities.

About 1,000 square feet of the store is an area where patrons can sit and play. Five tables can seat about four people per table. A 13 by 18 foot mural of an overhead shot of people playing a board game can also be seen near the tables.

The store will begin hosting board game tournaments on the second Saturday of every month. The first tournament will be on Dec. 11, during which people will play Llama Land. Preregistration costs $5.

The store sat empty for a long time before the Martinells acquired the keys, Jan Martinell said. It used to be a bank. Two vaults on-site do not close properly anymore, and are used for two purposes, she said.

Jan Martinell walks into one of two former vaults inside the new Enumclaw game store, Cole Street Game Vault, on Friday evening. Martinell and her husband, Chad, purchased the former bank building in downtown Enumclaw and turned it into a store that sells all sorts of board games, strategy games and card games.

One of the vaults houses a collection of the Martinell’s favorite games, totaling about 400. Some of the games include Point Salad, Space Base and Llama Land. The other vault has tables and can be rented out for private parties.

Jan and Chad Martinell have been board game aficionados for decades. They use one of the two vaults in their recently renovated bank for board-game enthusiasts to borrow their games and play them in the store for $5. The Martinell’s have several hundred games available for anyone to try out.

“The board game community is such a unique community,” Jan Martinell said. “It’s an accepting community, it’s a comfortable community and it’s all based around fun.”

She said they wanted their game store to be a place where people would want to hang out. Some game stores cater to specific types of players — they wanted theirs to be inviting and not limited to a specific theme.

“It was really important for us to make sure that we were offering something that people couldn’t just grab at Target or something like that,” Martinell said.

Cole Street Game Vault is open from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and 9 a.m. to 11 p.m. Friday and Saturday.