Entries categorized as ‘Local business’
A sad chapter in the storied history of National Hall has sputtered to an end. The Inn’s final day is Monday. Antiques, chandeliers, a 15-foot cherry bookshelf — all could go the way of Shaw’s, if that’s what Antares, the property’s elusive owner, wants.
The soon-to-be-former Inn at National Hall. (Photo by Anthony Karge/Westport News)
Can’t Westporters — a creative bunch, for sure – mine the handsome 3-story 137-year-old building’s past for an appropriate remodel?
Back in 1884 National Hall served as the 1st home of Staples High School. Of course, just 4 years ago we dedicated an $84 million renovation, so odds are we won’t be moving back downtown any time soon.
At one time the top floor was used as a basketball court. Rumor has it that the YMCA is dissatisfied with its current digs, just a skyhook away from National Hall. If they haven’t made plans to move anywhere, maybe the Inn could serve as a new Y. On 2nd thought, it is a bit cramped.
For many years, National Hall housed a furniture store. Age of Reason — right across the street — wanted to expand there recently, but Antares never returned phone calls. Returning to retail remains another option.
Because the building is on the National Register of Historic Places, it can’t be torn down as easily as your basic split-level. But that designation — and local politics — also constrict possible uses of the property.
So I guess there are no other options for…wait! I’ve got it!
One of National Hall’s most noted incarnations was as the home of Horace Staples’ Westport Bank & Trust Company. What a perfect location for a bank — and just what Westport needs!
On second thought — nah. No one would ever think of opening a new bank around here.
Right?
Categories: Downtown · History · Local business · Places · Staples HS · YMCA
Tagged: Age of Reason, Horace Staples, Inn at National Hall, Staples High School, Westport Bank & Trust Co., Westport YMCA
So what about an object like Princess Jewelers?
Ever since the Big Bang, it seems, the small store next to Volvo of Westport has been “going out of business.”
First they offered 50% off.
Then 70%.
Now customers get an 80% discount.
I’m holding out for 100.
Categories: Local business
Tagged: Princess Jewelers, volvo of Westport
Saugatuck is losing 1 of its favorite pizza places.
Four Brothers Pizza — part of a small local chain — is moving east. It will take over the spot near Fresh Market recently vacated by Mike’s Pizza, the very brief successor to Martha’s Pizza, which replaced some other place that replaced something before that.
But the Four Brothers spot near Dunville’s will remain a restaurant. The new place will be…Mexican.
No word on whether it will be called “Cuatro Hermanos.”
Categories: Local business · Restaurants · Saugatuck
Tagged: Four Brothers Pizza, Saugatuck
Blockbuster is closing hundreds of stores — over 500 this year, on top of 374 last year. In the most recent quarter the once-swaggering company lost $435 million — on top of a $360 million loss a year ago.
I hadn’t thought about Blockbuster in years — in today’s world there’s Netflix (the old-fashioned mail way, plus its streaming service), Hulu, and 5 new technologies that were announced just last night — but the news made me think about my old (very old) friend on the Post Road. It shrunk to half its size last year, ceding the east end to a big-and-tall clothing store (not my cup of tea).
I couldn’t imagine Blockbuster’s business model working in Westport anymore. Particularly when the library offers DVDs for the fairly low price of free.
I called the Westport store. A chirpy voice answered — a ringing phone was probably the most excitement she’d had all day.
“Blockbuster is shutting lots of stores,” I said. “Is Westport one of them?”
“We’re fine,” she replied.
“Well, how’s business?” I asked.
“Do you need something?” she countered.
“Like someone else I can talk to there?” I said. I was thinking like, you know, a manager.
“Like a DVD?” she wondered.
No. I did not need a DVD.
And I don’t know anyone else in Westport who still needs anything from Blockbuster.
Which is why I’m not sure business really is fine, over at the local “video rental store.”
Categories: Library · Local business · technology
Tagged: Blockbuster, Hulu, Netflix, video rental, Westport Public Library
February 10, 2010 · 1 Comment
Heard you can get 25% off all supplements at Fountain of Youth?
A free in-home consultation from Making Faces by Debbie? Two free children’s classes at Dynamic Martial Arts? A $20 blowout at Roots Salon?
Probably not. Then again, OurTownCrier.com — the website offering these exclusive deals — has been live for only a day or 2.
The site — linking local small businesses with Westporters seeking promotions and bargains — is the brainchild of Betsy Pollak. A former small businesswoman herself — she owned Sundries Gifts and Homewares in Sconset Square for 5 years, and Westport Gift below Sally’s Place for 7 — she’s closely attuned to the challenges faced by stores not named Gap or Banana Republic.
“Small business owners are overwhelmed,” she says. “They’re trying to make it in a tough economy, and because they’ve had to lay off staff, they’re having to do it all themselves.”
Spending all their time on basic functions, they can’t think about things like promotions and websites. So Betsy does it for them.
She advises them how to grow their businesses; takes photos; then gives them an internet presence at minimal cost. Some — like Great Cakes and Sally’s Place — have never been in cyberspace before.
What they get — and users see — is a clean, easy-to-navigate site, with sections including “Browse by Business Type,” “Featured Promotions,” “Business Spotlight” (Wild Pear and Max’s Art Supplies are in the current rotation), and “Upcoming Events” (like “Basics of Barbeque Cooking” at Bobby Q’s).
“I feel useful,” Betsy says. “As a small business owner I felt run down. Now I’m rejuvenated.”
Valentine’s Day offers a great opportunity for local promotions. Traffic on OurTownCrier.com will build by word of mouth, but for now even a few additional customers are important to local businesses, Betsy says.
“The cost of business anywhere in town — let alone Main Street — is out of control,” she notes. “You spend $1,000 a month in electric bills alone.
“But we need each other. Westporters want a town without chain stores everywhere. And small business want appreciative customers.”
In very old days, town criers gave citizens the news. In the mid-20th century, the Town Crier was Westport’s local newspaper. Today we get news of promotions and bargains — and businesses reach customers — with OurTownCrier.com.
Westport is still a small town after all.
Categories: Economy · Local business · People
Tagged: Betsy Pollak, Bobby Q's, Dynamic Martial Arts, Fountain of Youth, Great Cakes, Making Faces by Debbie, OurTownCrier.com, Roots Salon, Sally's Place
Shaw’s closed; Fresh Market opened. Sweet.
Depot Liquors is gone; another package store will take its place. No big deal.
But Bedroom Matters is shutting its doors tomorrow. That is very bad news for thousands of Westport women — plus their partners.
Bedroom Matters is a boutique across from the railroad station — a few doors down from Depot Liquors, in fact. It sells the usual: lingerie, massage candles, rhinestone pasties, Kama Sutra honey dust, vibrators, Bad Girl cuffs.
Margaret Wagner
In 2 years, it’s developed a loyal following. “Our customers are amazing,” says founder Margaret Wagner.
But rents are high. So tomorrow (Friday) is her last day as a brick-and-mortar retailer. All merchandise is 50 percent off. A final event tomorrow night will clear everything off the shelves.
Customers — many of whom thank Wagner for spicing up their sex lives and/or saving their marriages — need not despair. She will continue to sell her products — including bedding, intimate objects, and educational and erotic books — online.
Her classes (intimacy, lap-dancing — “anything fun and sexy,” Wagner says) and her Sensual Circles women’s groups will be held in several area locations.
“We have 2,500 women on our mailing list,” Wagner says. Places like Arogya and Soleil Toile are very interested in having our events at their place.”
Kama Sutra massage oil is $19.99 on the Bedroom Matters website.
Wagner says she is “passionate about one thing: living a sensual life.”
But sex, she says, ”has become an action, a verb. Its soul is lost as it gets tracked through the mud of everything from pornography to Cougar Town.”
She founded Bedroom Matters to “reintroduce sex and intimacy as a core of our being. (I wanted) to build a platform for sensuality and sexuality that is beautiful, respectful, fun and intimate.”
She calls her store “an expensive tool to help women — and couples — with relationships and intimacy.” It’s time now, she says, to move more toward the educational side of the business. And to sell products in an environment with no overhead.
As Shoeless Joe Jackson says in “Field of Dreams”: “If you build it, they will come.”
(Wagner also blogs. Click here to read “Margaret’s Bedroom.”)
This book includes a box to check after completing each of the 101 places.
Categories: Economy · Local business · People · Saugatuck
Tagged: Arogya, Bedroom Matters, Depot Liquors, Fresh Market, Margaret Wagner, Shaw's, Soleil Toile, women's erotica
Meat Loaf was wrong. 2 out of 3 is bad.
Knitting Central — 1 of 3 adjacent stores in the strip mall opposite Fresh Market — is closing its doors. With Princess Jewelers also supposedly going out of business — it’s been advertising 50 to 70% off for months, though recently the discount was upped to 80% — there will be only 1 place open of the 3.
That’s Body Quest — an “energizing fitness fusion class” — which occupies the spot held for 60 years by Beacon Electronics.
Knitting Central’s demise was announced in an email, and on the store’s website, by the owners. They called New Year’s a time “to have a lifestyle change and start a new chapter.”
The decision came after “an incredible amount of thought and conversation,” they said. Though the store will close, they will continue to offer “the best and most unique fibers available” online. Their internet store, they said, has grown well.
The owners — Cynthia and Rick — look forward to spending more time together, and with their family, while sharing their love of knitting and crocheting with their customers.
I never set foot inside Knitting Central — never knew it existed, to be honest — but “06880″ reader Fran White called it “a wonderful store. They were always willing to help with a problem, for both experienced and beginning knitters.”
Rick and Cynthia said they hoped they met the goals they set when they opened their Post Road East store — just west of Dunkin’ Donuts and the UPS Store — 6 years ago: to grow a true knitting community, and provide a strong educational program.
A sale — 30-35% off — began yesterday. It includes needles, accessories, books, patterns, sample garments and yarns. Classes will continue as listed, and all special orders already placed will be delivered.
Though the decision to close involved many factors, looking at those soon-to-be-empty storefronts I think of another song, this one by Meat Loaf contemporaries Queen. Another One Bites the Dust.
Categories: Local business
Tagged: Body Quest, Knitting Central, Princess Jewelers
Long, long ago — way before its fabled run on Charles Street — the Arrow Restaurant perched at the narrow intersection of Saugatuck Avenue and Franklin Street.
It’s a sharp, triangular space — in fact, that’s how the Arrow got its name.
Later, for many years, the spot was occupied by Betty Ann Kiester’s Creative Windows drapery shop.
Recently, a sign sprouted announcing the opening of “Westport Chinese Takeout.”
Back when the Arrow ruled Saugatuck, there were only 2 Chinese restaurants in Westport: Westlake and the Golden House.
Now there seem to be dozens.
Many — particularly the takeout places — are indistinguishable. But 1 of the most popular, and best known, is Jasmine.
Or, as it’s known to long-time Westporters: “The old Arrow.”
Categories: Local business · Looking back · Restaurants · Saugatuck
Tagged: Arrow Restaurant, Chinese restaurants, Chinese takeout, Saugatuck
This week, as our thoughts turn to skiing, skating and hot chocolate, Westport welcomes — an ice cream shop.
Sunny Daes introduces its 5th Connecticut location (30 Riverside Avenue — site of the former King’s service station) with a “soft opening” (ho ho). It will show off its 68 favors of ice cream, gelato and frozen yogurt, with free cones on New Year’s Eve.
I don’t want to be the skunk at the garden party, but I’ve got a few questions:
- Will the location work? That section of Riverside Avenue — just beyond the Post Road intersection — has always been a tough business environment. Restaurants and retailers struggle. It’s out of sight — physically and metaphorically — for manydowntown shoppers. Most ice cream shops rely heavily on foot traffic, which is non-existent across the river. And despite a few parking spots in front of the store, getting into and out of the small lot is not easy.
- Is Westport ready for another ice cream place? Carvel carved out a niche around the time the Bedfords and Coleys settled in town. Baskin-Robbins has a prime downtown spot, though it’s suffered since the demise of the movie theaters. Ben & Jerry’s — arguably the world’s most famous ice cream name — recently closed up shop. Gone too are MaggieMoo’s, TCBY and — for far too long — the crème de la crème, the Ice Cream Parlor.
- What’s with the name? Sunny Daes does not scream “ice cream”; in fact, it looks vaguely Middle Eastern. It’s one thing if you’ve got the name recognition of Tom Carvel, but Sunny Daes does not. They must not only introduce themselves to Westport; they have to explain what they are.
None of those problems are insurmountable. Sunny Daes may well thrive. It might lead to a West Bank (of the Saugatuck) renaissance. Certainly, any new business in Westport is welcome.
Even one selling ice cream in the dead of winter.
Categories: Downtown · Local business
Tagged: Ben & Jerry's Baskin-Robbins, Carvel, ice cream, Sunny Daes, TCBY
The good news is: Fairfield County Bank, opening next month at the formerly wooded corner of the Post Road and South Compo, looks neither new nor ugly. In fact, it seems like it’s been there forever.
The bad news: It’s a bank.
Categories: Local business · Places
Tagged: Fairfield County bank
