Blissful out, Mattress World Northwest in at Cascade Square in The Dalles

Sean Hathaway seen above with the Mattress World Northwest mascot at a Meals On Wheels event. Today, Hathaway announced he and his wife Sharie are opening a Mattress World Store at Cascade Square in February. It will be the 27th store in Oregon.

By Tom Peterson

The Dalles, Ore., Jan. 21, 2026 — The closure of Blissful Mattress last weekend added another vacant storefront to Cascade Square in The Dalles, underscoring continued strain in The Dalles’ retail sector as tens of thousands of square feet of commercial space remain empty.

But not for long.

Just as Blissful Mattress is going out, Mattress World Northwest announced it is taking the same 6,000 square foot location. There is no affiliation or family ties between the two companies.

The new store plans to open in February, said Mattress World NW owner Sean Hathaway, who confirmed the move Tuesday afternoon.

Hathaway and his wife Sharie have wanted to open a store in The Dalles for a long time, he said.

Sean and Sharie Hathaway

“We’ve been working on it for over five years,” Hathaway said, noting he started talking to Mercury Development’s Timothy Dougherty, who leases the plaza space during the facade renovation in 2017. “We’ve always had our eye on The Dalles.”

The company is targeting a February opening, with an ideal goal of launching around the Presidents Day weekend. “Feb. 1 is dreaming,” Hathaway said. “I’ll be disappointed if we’re not open in February.”

Mattress World Northwest plans to operate the store with a small, locally staffed team and focus on in-person shopping, Hathaway said while online mattress sales now account for 40 percent of the market, many customers still want to see and try products before buying.

“People want to touch and feel everything,” he said. “They want to come in, lay on it, and make sure it’s right.”

The store will carry a wide range of nationally recognized mattress brands, including Tempur-Pedic, Beautyrest, Purple, Helix, Aireloom and Avocado, positioning the location as a showroom for both traditional and online-native brands.

Hathaway said the company intends to operate as a family-owned, community-focused business despite its size, emphasizing local involvement and partnerships rather than a strictly corporate approach.

“We’re not just coming up there to make money,” he said. “We’re coming up to fit in and be a part of the community.”

He said Mattress World Northwest plans to support local schools, charities and fundraising efforts, including a community-focused grand opening event once the store is operational.

“The Dalles is a nice town,” Hathaway said. “We like that place.”

World Mattress Northwest has 26 store locations in Oregon in the Portland and Willamette Valley regions reaching from Corvallis to Scapoose.

Blissful Closure

Blissful Mattress store fat Cascade Square was empty this morning, Jan. 21.

Blissful Mattress, which opened in the summer of 2021 at 1332 W. Sixth St., closed its doors Sunday, Jan. 18, vacating the roughly 6,000-square-foot space at the shopping center on West Sixth Street.

Chris Morgan, 53, of Canby, owner of Blissful Mattress and of no relation or partnership with Mattress World Northwest, said the decision to close the The Dalles location came down to a combination of personal considerations and business realities.

“I live over here (in Canby) and it has been tough being away from family for five years,” Morgan said this morning. “It is a tough market. It’s sporadic over there. You get a bigger population over here. It just makes business sense and personal sense for me.”

Morgan said lease costs and staffing challenges also played a role.

“Don’t overpay — if the lease had been about half of what it was, we would have kept it going in The Dalles,” he said. “That’s the simplest thing to say about it. Also, have your own staff. It’s hard to staff in The Dalles.”

Blissful Mattress had positioned itself as a locally focused alternative when it opened, emphasizing locally made mattresses and had dreams of opening stores in Hood River as well as across the bridge in Washington.

The company has now shifted its focus to a new store in Molalla, just west of Oregon City.

Brick & Mortar

Left to right at Cascade Square - Joanne Fabrics, Blissful Mattress, Rite Aide - all currently shuttered.

While the store’s name Blissful Mattress remained boldly on the facade of the store this morning, a poorly secured banner stated “Store Closing Everything Must Go” was folded and drooping and flapping in the icy breeze.

It’s departure brings the estimated total of vacant retail space at Cascade Square to about 54,000 square feet.

Blissful joins a growing list of recent closures at the center, including long-time retailers Rite Aid, Joann Fabrics and Perfect Look, making Cascade Square a visible example of broader challenges facing brick-and-mortar retailers in The Dalles.

While the concentration of closures at Cascade Square may give the impression of broader retail collapse, the circumstances behind each business’s exit were largely specific and unrelated.

For example, other mattress retailers, including Downey Sleep Center, Hampton Furniture and Mattress Firm, continue to operate successfully in The Dalles.

Joann Fabrics shuttered all of its stores nationwide by mid-2025 following years of financial strain tied to heavy private-equity debt, declining post-pandemic sales, supply-chain disruptions and repeated bankruptcy filings that ended in liquidation.

Rite Aid’s closure stemmed from crippling debt, intense competition from larger pharmacy chains and mounting legal costs tied to opioid litigation, ultimately leading to the shutdown of all locations by late 2025. Taken together, the closures reflect a series of individual business and management decisions rather than a single economic failure unique to The Dalles.

Many say that retail sales are being lost to online giants.

As of the most recent government data from December 2025, about 16.4 percent of total U.S. retail sales were made online, meaning consumers ordered goods over the internet for delivery instead of purchasing in physical stores. In that period, total U.S. retail sales were roughly $1.89 trillion, and online (e-commerce) sales made up about $310 billion of that figure, according to census.gov

That percentage is low compared to other nations. China’s population buys about 30 percent of retail online, England, 25 percent.

Cascade Square in The Dalles remains one of the city’s most prominent retail hubs, but the concentration of vacant storefronts has raised questions about long-term retail demand. Business owners and property managers have said the challenges are complex, with no single cause driving closures, but rather a mix of poor management decisions.

CCCNews reached out to Cascade Square property representatives for comment but had not received a response by publication time.