COMMERCIAL INTERIOR DESIGN: Shopping voyage

Shopping at Mel Fisher's Treasures in The District at Green Valley is like "searching for treasure underwater without getting wet," according to manager Joe Beaton.

The store, filled with gold coins, silver bars and emeralds from a sunken Spanish galleon, has underwater decor, including a seashell-filled limestone floor. Its display cases have sandblasted wavy sides that resemble kelp in motion. Colorful pendant lights resembling jellyfish hang above the cases. And the tiered-soffit ceiling is ocean blue and glows.

The 785-square-foot store immerses shoppers in the dive experience, according to Anthony Young, a principal at Indigo Architecture in Las Vegas, the store's designer.

"The entire premise was to give individuals coming into the store the idea of going on a treasure hunt in the ocean," he said.

Aptly named, the store is filled with artifacts recovered by the late Mel Fisher and his salvage team from the Nuestra Señora de Atocha, a Spanish galleon that sank off the Florida Keys in 1622.

Young, a scuba diver who knew about Fisher and his work discovering the Atocha, came up with the design, said Beaton, who manages the store with his wife, Liz.

Pieces of eight (Spanish silver coins), gold and silver bars, silver plates, iron spikes, pottery shards, and jewelry recovered from the ship are available. Items are priced from $14.95 to $1.1 million and come with a certificate of authenticity.

In addition, the store sells replicas of coins and jewelry that are made from recovered gold and silver.

Many of the jewelry pieces incorporate emeralds that were part of the ship's cargo. Beaton said 63 pounds of emeralds from the Muzo Mine in Colombia, worth $1 to $2 billion and regarded as the finest in the world, have been recovered so far.

Period weaponry, books, maps and pirate-themed items also are featured.

The Las Vegas-based Korte Co. built the $150,000 project.

"It was the smallest thing I've ever done, but it was a lot of fun," said Korte's project manager Ken Guglielmo, who also scuba dives and knew of Fisher's work.

The biggest challenge in creating the store was the timeline, which was dictated by American Nevada Co., the shopping mall's owner.

Young said he and partner Steve Maahs had seven days to go from concept to construction documents, while Guglielmo and his crew had slightly less than four weeks to complete construction.

The Henderson store is one of only six selling artifacts from the Atocha, and the only one outside of Florida. Before then, treasures from the collection were displayed and sold primarily through four-day shows at jewelry stores across the nation.

Beaton, a graduate of Valley High School and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said the valley location was selected because of the area's diverse attractions and popularity as a tourist destination. He and Kim Fisher, Mel Fisher's son and head of the Fisher Cos., had discussed taking the replica line on cruise ships, but felt the Henderson store would be a more viable option.

Beaton met the Fisher family after graduating from college while working as a dive instructor in Key West. He lived across the street from Kim Fisher and the two became friends. Eventually, he started coordinating charter trips for investors in the salvage operation and was later named in charge of investor relations.

Beaton has dived to the Atocha wreckage more than 100 times.

In addition to selling items from the ship, the store doubles as a museum and displays some of the more valuable and rare artifacts recovered.

"For a country with such short history, people as a whole appreciate the history," Beaton said. "About 90 percent of those coming into the store know the story of Mel Fisher and the Atocha."

Both Guglielmo and Young said the project's history was one of the most interesting aspects of the job. Maahs plans to dive to the wreck in August.

The Atocha was part of Spain's 28-ship Tierra Firme and Guard Ship fleets sent to the Caribbean Sea and South America in 1622 to bring back gold, silver and gems to bolster its treasuries, which were being depleted by the Thirty Years War with the Dutch and French, as well as to support its control of territories on four continents.

A large Dutch fleet forced the commander of the Spanish ships to alter plans for their return to Spain. They left Havana on Sept. 4, six weeks behind schedule after transferring the bulk of the treasure to the Atocha. The following day, the weather worsened. Clouds separated the ships and a hurricane pushed the fleet north toward Florida.

Although 20 of the ships were able to avoid the storm in the Gulf of Mexico, four were forced into the Florida Keys, including the Atocha, which was thrown against a coral reef by a large wave and sunk. The storm scattered the remains of the lost ships over 50 miles.

The Spaniards organized some salvage efforts in the first few years after the ships sank, but they were hampered by the war, as well as the weather. In 1817, when the United States acquired Florida, Spain's influence in the region ended, leaving the Atocha, its sister ship the Santa Margarita, and others from the fleet forgotten until discovered centuries later by Fisher and his crew.

An avid scuba diver, Fisher and his wife, Delores, became interested in the Atocha after meeting treasure hunter Kip Wagner in 1964 when they were in Florida making underwater films to promote the sport and support his trips. Fisher joined the search for sunken treasure, finding thousands of gold coins from a fleet lost in 1715.

According to Fisher's biography, he began inventing some of the equipment that would lead him to the Atocha and enlisted an archaeologist to record, study and restore any artifacts.

Beaton said Fisher began his search for the ship in 1969 aided by detailed descriptions the Spaniards kept of the ship's cargo and the location where it went down. He found his first silver coins two years later. In 1973, he found three silver bars, and two years later a bronze cannon marked with the name Atocha was discovered.

A large portion of the Margarita was found in 1980 and the Atocha was found in 1985.

Although Mel Fisher died in December 1998, salvage efforts continue under the direction of Kim Fisher and other family members.

Beaton said crews have recovered about 137,000 pieces of eight and another 113,000 are "still out there.

"We've only recovered about a third of the $500 million manifest that we know about," he said.

Real Estate home