The old Peninsula Hotel building that overlooks Harborview Drive in downtown Gig Harbor has held many tenants since it was first built in 1925, including, according to some, a few resident ghosts.

The historic building currently houses businesses such as Spiro’s Pizza and Pasta and, as of last month, Allstar Guitar.

“No one’s been playing any of the instruments in the middle of the night,” Allstar owner Dan Wilson joked about his new store’s rumored spectral inhabitants. “They’re good ghosts.”

Wilson and his wife, May, started to move their business, a full-service music store that offers lessons, retail sales and instrument repair, into the old hotel in mid-December. They had been located just a few blocks north on Harborview Drive, in the same building as El Pueblito Mexican Restaurant, since 2004, but Wilson said they had been on the hunt for a new location for the past three years.

It’s been Wilson’s goal to add wind instruments to Allstar’s repertoire – to offer lessons and sales for trumpets, clarinets, trombones and more to go along with guitars, drums and banjos, for a store that went beyond just rock ’n’ roll.

“We wanted to be a music academy,” Wilson said. “Who knows, maybe we’ll even add bagpipes and accordions some day.”

The problem with the old location was that louder instruments, such as trumpets, could easily be heard through the store’s walls and disturb patrons at the restaurant.

The Wilsons needed new digs before they could bring in the horns.

They looked at a few different locations around Gig Harbor, trying to meet their criteria of a space with thicker walls and plenty of space for expanded classrooms and instrument workshops. Then May drove past the hotel building and saw a “for rent” sign in its upstairs space.

“This place has about everything we wanted,” Wilson said.

The new space has 10 teaching rooms, up from five at the previous location, as well as two larger rooms for possible meetings and recitals, more office and workshop space and storage rooms for instruments, cases and Wilson’s vinyl-to-CD conversion station.

And it provides much better soundproofing.

“I blew a trumpet up here, and you couldn’t hear any of it downstairs,” said Wilson, speculating that the renovations to the building after a fire at the old W.B. Scott’s bar left it with thick insulation.

That means Allstar Guitar can press ahead with its wind instrument expansion. Wilson said he’s already hired two instructors, including renowned tenor saxophonist Ted Dortch, and will start classes on the new instruments as soon as enough students sign up.

Allstar taught about 200 students at the former location, from ages 5 to 80, and Wilson said the new space has the potential to offer classes to nearly twice that many. He teaches about 40 of the students himself.

He added he wanted to offer wind instruments because he’s had students in guitar or drum classes tell him they tried to pick up a trumpet or saxophone in lessons at school but gave up the instruments.

“And then they think they’ve failed,” Wilson said. “We think, if they’re given the time and skills to succeed, a certain percentage of them will.”

Wilson is involved with Music for Youth, a program through a branch of CrimeStoppers that provides instruments and lessons to children and teenagers who might not otherwise have access.

He said he wants Allstar’s new space to host recitals for the program, and he added that the expanded storage area means he and May can move many of the supplies for the program out of their home garage.

Lessons for the original Allstar instruments also will be improved in their new location, Wilson said. The old space only had room for one drum kit, forcing the student and the instructor to take turns. Now, the drum room fits two kits side-by-side.

There are still a few things left to move from down the street, Wilson said, although he received a lot of help from customers, students and friends who volunteered their time and vehicles to help transport Allstar’s equipment to its new space.

He hopes to begin wind instrument classes in February and complete the large expansion of his store’s capabilities.

“It’ll be at least double what we used to be able to do,” Wilson said. “And, of course, the view’s not bad either.”

Reporter Will Livesley-O’Neill can be reached at 253-358-4152 or by email at will.livesley-oneill@gateline.com. Follow him on Twitter, @gateway_will.