Beans Last Days

Thirteen years ago, at The Rouse Company annual shareholders meeting, Tony Deering announced that catalog retailer LL Bean would be opening its first ever retail (non-outlet) store at The Mall. The story goes that this announcement upstaged the retailers own plans to break the news. To show their displeasure at this preemptive PR strike by a real estate developer, LL Bean went ahead and opened their Tysons Corner store first.

Despite this corporate silliness, LL Bean opened its Columbia store in May of 2001, a few months after Tysons Corner. This Sunday, after twelve years selling khakis and canoes to HoCo locos, the Columbia store will close. By midsummer the 30,000 square foot building that housed them will be gone, replaced by a new plaza and a reopening of the old main entrance.

Mumbles & Squeaks Closing

Mumbles & Squeaks is not just a toy store with a great name, it’s a great toy store. For twenty some years Ed and Frank offered HoCo locos an alternative to big box and mall toy stores. Mumbles & Squeaks was like a curated exhibit of simple and unique toys. I don’t believe they carried anything electronic.

I refer to them in past tense because yesterday, on their Facebook page, Ed and Frank announced that they are closing up shop “to fulfill a long time dream of becoming beach bums in Florida.”

Can I come?

They will remain open until the end of the month as they sell off their inventory.

“We travel lite so we will only take our memories. Everything must go! Please come by wish us well! Share our news and our sale with all your friends so we don't miss anyone. You may forward this message to them.

Please come to Mumbles and Squeaks to share a story, a hug, a tear. As we said, this is bitter sweet. We won't say, "Goodbye." We would rather say, "We will save you a seat on the beach!"

Mumbles and Squeaks was one of those businesses that make Ellicott City unique. They will be missed.

The End of an Era

Watermont Pharmacy is closing. After serving the community for fifty two years, the family owned business has fallen victim to a changing health care marketplace.

I feel at least partially to blame. When we first moved to this Ellicott City neighborhood in 2006, I began getting my prescriptions filled at Watermont. By then the pharmacy was being run by Jodi (Dagold) Lare, the daughter of the original pharmacist, Donald Dagold. The pharmacy provided the kind of personal service you’d expect from local owners, including home delivery.

Over time however, as my health plan changed and I had to shoulder more of my own medication costs, I switched to an online pharmacy reducing my costs by a third. Undoubtedly this was true with other of their former customers as well.

The store reminded me of pharmacies I knew growing up, when they typically included a soda fountain. Though the soda jerks are now long gone, the counter and stools remained as reminders of another era.

The name Watermont was coined by combining the names of the crossroads where the store was located, Waterloo and Montgomery. 

Blockbusted

It doesn't seem like all that long ago that having a Blockbuster store nearby was seen as a plus. Then came Netflix in 1997, Redbox in 2002 and Video on Demand shortly thereafter and the corner Blockbuster store began to lose relevance.

Seeing this banner draped across the Blockbuster storefront on Dobbin Road reminded me just how quickly a hot retail trend can cool off. The first Blockbuster opened in 1985 and by 2004 the company had over 9,000 stores and 60,000 employees. Six years later the company sought protection of the bankruptcy court. Today, the company now owned by Dish Networks, has approximately 1,000 remaining stores. I believe this is the last one in HoCo.

Dead Pearl

A little over two years ago, on a podcast with HowChow, Paul and I quipped about the long term prospects of the Red Pearl in Columbia Town Center. At that time the new Asian restaurant was only the latest in a long list of food establishment to occupy the space. We noted that while the other lakefront restaurants, Tomato Palace, Clyde's and Sushi Sono, thrived, the occupants of this particular space kept failing.

We dubbed it the curse of the Red Pearl.

It now appears that the curse has finally taken down its namesake. Today a locksmith arrived to change the locks. Looking in the windows I saw that many of the tables had been removed.

Despite its legacy, the space may not stay dark for long. Sources tell me that a deal is in the works for a new place. Perhaps the landlord should contract with Miss Rudolph first.

Stay tuned. 

Local Coffee

Last Friday, at the Colosseum Gyms' member appreciation barbecue, I struck up a casual conversation by the deserts with Patti Griffin. Predictably our small talk turned to work.

“What do you do for a living?” I asked.

“I work in a family business,” she replied.

It’s an old family business too. Pfefferkorn Coffee has been roasted in Baltimore for over a hundred years. Patti is the daughter of the family patriarch; Louis Pfefferkorn, Sr. She told me that her grandfather once owned a sizable farm in western HoCo. “He moved out here after selling his original farm behind what is now Edmonson Village Shopping Center in Baltimore." The business needed a farm for the horses for their delivery wagons. Before they focused exclusively on coffee the family was in the grocery business.

It’s good coffee too but you can’t buy it in HoCo right now. The last HoCo retailer that carried Pfefferkorns coffee was Yates Grocery on Main Street in Ellicott City. Last month the store owner, Betty Jacobs, announced that Yates would be closing after 127 years.

“We hope to have a couple of new retailers in Howard County soon,” Patti told me, “and we also plan to make it available online.”

Room for Rent

The Room Store's days in Columbia may be numbered. The low priced furniture chain filed for a Chapter 11 bankruptcy in December with hopes that they could reemerge as a going concern.

That may no longer be the case. In April the chain exited the Texas market where it got its start by closing ten stores. Now the rest of the stores may be on the chopping block. According to this story by Gregory J. Gilligan in the Richmond Times-Dispatch, the company has asked the bankruptcy judge “to allow the beleaguered chain to sell its assets at an auction.”

“The stores and inventory could be sold in their entirety to a buyer that would continue running some or all of the locations, or piecemeal to a variety of buyers.”

Judging by how quickly the adjacent former Borders store was back-filled, this space is not likely to be dark for very long.

A Diners Last Stand

The Forest Diner in Ellicott City is closing this month. After sixty six years, this venerable HoCo institution will serve its last meals on May 28^th as the building makes way for a new mixed use development.

This is truly the end of an era. The Forest Diner may be the only true diner in HoCo. By true diner I mean real diner. Diners were originally manufactured elsewhere and then trucked to their locations. In very short order they could open for business.

Though it was modified and expanded over the years, the original stainless steel dining car is still intact. On Saturday morning I asked our server, Lisa, what was to become of the dining car when the place closes. This is a rare piece of roadside Americana after all.

“I don’t know,” she said sadly.

A note in the diner did say that the Forest Diner kitchen staff and servers will still be around. They are moving across the street to Jilly’s restaurant which will begin serving breakfast after the Forest Diner closes.

Laurel Mall Closed…Finally

Last November Greenberg Gibbons announced that they would soon begin demolishing the ill fated Laurel Mall. At the time a handful of retailers remained, trying to eke out a living from the dying mall. On May Day, the doors were finally locked. The mall is now "permanently closed."

According to this story by Holly Nunn in Gazette.net, the malls demise has long been expected. “The shuttering of the mall comes after five years of proposed redevelopment, as the mall’s management changed hands and funding for development projects dried up.”

Greenberg Gibbons took over the project from General Growth Properties who was managing it on behalf of Somera Capital. The reborn and rechristened Laurel Town Centre will be an open air lifestyle center and will include over four hundred residential units.

Once it gets underway that is. Right now, and for the foreseeable future, it is simply another dead mall. 

So Long Laptop Alley

The Dobbin Road Starbucks closed Tuesday. Tomorrow it will reopen in a new building across the street. The staff will be the same and so will the coffee but it will be different. For one, I won’t call it Laptop Alley anymore.

The old Dobbin Starbucks space was very linear, about three times as long as it was wide. To get to the counter you passed through a narrow seating area that always seemed full of people on laptops. It was Columbias Laptopistan.

The new space is over a thousand square feet smaller, though it does have a drive thru window. Personally, as an acknowledged coffee shop person, I don’t see that as an improvement.

I’ll likely drop in tomorrow morning to check it out. I’m hoping that it retains at least some of the vibe of the old place. Familiar faces behind the counter will help.

And speaking of Starbucks...the Worst Busiest Starbucks in HoCo recently got a makeover. It wasn’t completed the last time I was over there but it looked like they were trying to accommodate more solo patrons by replacing tables with communal counters. I’d be interested in hearing what To2C readers think about it.

Anyone?

Restoration Hardware Closing

The Restoration Hardware store in The Mall is closing. The upscale home furnishings and accessories store that was never really about hardware came to Columbia in 2000 with the opening of Nordstrom.

Almost from its inception, the retailer struggled financially, finally teetering on the edge of bankruptcy in 2008 before being taken private by Catterhorn Partners. Recently the company has been shuttering its mall stores and shifting to larger stand alone stores and repositioning the brand. They are moving from selling items like Super Hero in Box to high end design. According to this story by Tom Vanderbilt in The Wall Street Journal, Gary Friedman, the CEO, “now envisions Restoration as a kind of "open platform," an app store for home decor, where the likes of London furniture maker and antiques dealer Timothy Oulton and the Midwestern/Dutch pair of Mark Sage and Rudi Nijssen can craft new pieces out of old things, artisanal objects pitched somewhere between mall sameness and Design Center uniqueness.”

“Rather than hedging, he says, the company doubled down. "We said, 'Let's forget about the customer for a minute,' " Friedman says. "I don't mean that in an arrogant way. We believe that great brands don't chase customers, customers chase great brands." While everybody was "screaming value," Restoration went the other direction. "In bad economic times," argues Friedman, "quality becomes even more important, uniqueness becomes even more important—people need to be inspired to buy something."

Big Bet Goes Bad

Almost exactly three years ago, I lauded Eric Stein for his “big bet” in opening The Wine Seller in Shipley’s Grant. It was then the early days of the recession and this was his second HoCo store. Eric was one of the few loco businesses that dared to expand during those dark days.

Sadly it looks as if he lost that bet. When I drove past the store early this week I noticed the store had closed.

Three years ago few suspected that the economy would still be limping along in 2011.

It is also a sort of weird coincidence that it was overcast and raining when I took my first picture of his then new store and the weather was exactly the same when I snapped this picture on Wednesday.

Another Village Loses a Grocery

The long predicted closing of the Long Reach Safeway is now official. According to this story by David Greisman in Explore Howard, the grocery anchor in the Long Reach Village Center “will close Saturday, Nov. 5, according to a company spokesman.”

“That the Safeway will close did not come as a surprise to Rita Seidelman, the village community association's assistant administrator.

"Their shelves haven't been very well-stocked in a long time," Seidelman said. "The store seems very empty."

The closing may actually be a blessing in disguise. The article also notes the village centers new owner has indicated that another grocer may take over the space after Safeway leaves.

“Long Reach village board member Nina Basu said the shopping center's owner, America's Realty, noted in a letter to the village administrator that another grocery store would replace the Safeway. Though the letter didn't name the company, Basu said the new tenant was described as "a high-end store" that will have a café with wireless Internet inside.”

Perhaps this could be another opportunity for Green Valley Markets.

Sharkey’s Last Call

Sharkey’s, the eclectic little bar above Johnny’s Bistro on Main Street in Ellicott City, is closing. When he locks up this Friday night, Sharkey's will cease to be and one of HoCo’s smallest bars will pass on into HoCo loco lure.

This afternoon Sharkey told me that he initially plans to head off to Chicago to see some friends but after that, he really doesn’t have a plan.  He just needs to take an extended time out from bar tending. 

Over the past the few years Sharkey has also been taking care of his mom. She passed away last July. 

He told me that the business had been okay but that he was also growing tired with the antics of some of the younger crowd that now frequents Main Street on weekends. He said he oftentimes yells out the second floor windows at the kids urinating in the bushes across the street. “The older crowd doesn’t come down here at night anymore,” he lamented.

The bar goes with Sharkey too. He told me that a church will be taking over the space after he’s gone. I hate it when that happens to a perfectly good bar.

Scene This Week In…

The closing of an established watering hole signals a cultural shift in a community. The closing of Michael’s Pub in the Kings Contrivance Village Center on Monday felt like one of those shifts.

Michael’s certainly qualifies as being established. It opened in the summer of 1986 long before anyone ever heard of Looney’s Pub or Rams Head. It enjoyed a long reign as the Happy Hour of choice for folks working in the Route 32 corridor. I was one those patrons in those early years when I worked in the Crystal Heights Office Center on Old Columbia Road.

As befitting a public house of high stature, it’s closing was well covered in the HoCo loco press. The most comprehensive coverage was provided by David Greisman in Columbia Patch, complete with video.

Michael’s Pub will now join other notable Columbia pubs that have given their last call; Lucky Ned Peppers, JK’s Pub, The Last Chance and the Rusty Scupper to name a few.

For those who practice the Christian faith this is the Lenten season, a time of reflection and renewal. Perhaps no chapel is more symbolic of reflection and renewal than Our Lady’s Center on Rogers Avenue in Ellicott City. This is the third incarnation of Our Lady’s Center after the first two were destroyed by fire.

 It also lies in flood plain.

It is a beautiful setting though, tucked down in the trees behind a car dealership, nestled along a creek. It is strikingly peaceful given its commercial and residential surroundings. You begin to relax even as you drive down the long tree lined entrance road.

As good a place as any for reflection and renewal I suppose. 

Bean Sprouts, Record Breaking, & Sex

If you happen to have a package of locally packaged bean sprouts in your fridge you might want to give them a toss. According to this story by Liz F. Kay in The Sun, Woodbine based Vegi-Pak Farm was shut down by state inspectors that “found equipment coated in food waste and a fly infestation inside the facility in September. In addition, workers were not adequately washing and cleaning the soybeans, and reported they were instructed by the company president to fabricate disinfection records, according to the complaint.”

BWI Thurgood Marshall International Airport continues to rack up passenger traffic growth records. According to Dr. Gridlock in The Washington Post, the airport had a record year last year. “More than 21.9 million commercial passengers flew through the airport last year. That's an increase of 4.7 percent over 2009 and eclipses the previous record of just over 21 million set in 2007.”

I received a tip from a commenter this weekend that the woman who brought down Representative Chris "Craigslist"  Lee last week is a HoCo resident. Yesha Callahan, who also went public last week, lives in Columbia. This reminded me of another former Columbia resident that found herself in the middle of a national political sex scandal, Linda Tripp. 

Hasta la Vista HoCo Harley

In May of 2004, Harley Davidson of Maryland celebrated the grand opening of their new location in the Troy Hill Commerce Center in Elkridge. According to this story by Liz F. Kay in The Sun the festivities included “a parade of motorcycles, fire engines and public officials in SUVs celebrated the dealership's reopening - a symbol of the transformation that county officials hope will continue along U.S. 1”

“With County Executive James N. Robey adorned in an orange and black leather jacket for his remarks - and Steppenwolf's "Born To Be Wild" blasting from stereo speakers - the store opened to great fanfare in the Troy Hill Commerce Center, just north of Route 100.”

Those wild days are now over.  This week I received a mailer from my buddy Rob Freedman informing me that the property is for sale. According to this story by Frank Hazzard in Elkridge Patch the motorcycle dealership, “will close permanently on Feb. 28.”

“The business is closing, in part, due to the down economy,” said Tina Ice, 66, who has owned the Elkridge dealership for 20 years.”

Meanwhile, across town in Annapolis Junction, Bob Henig a BMW motorcycle dealer holds his own. Bob told Frank he’d been prudent.

“We had plans in January of ’09 to double the size of  [Bob's BMW] and triple the parking, but we put that on hold when we saw what was coming in terms of the economy. Good decision."

I was never much attracted to motorcycles. They just didn’t look like that much fun to me, which is probably a good thing.

Another Write Off

The Pen Boutique sells a Mohammed Ali fountain pen for $21,000. That’s for the gold and diamond version. They also sell a sterling silver limited edition for $2,500.

As much as I enjoy writing, I could never see spending that kind of money on a pen. I was given an expensive pen once. I lost it. I didn’t feel compelled to replace it either. When I saw that the Pen Boutique in The Mall was closing, I wasn’t really that surprised. I had never even been in the store.

In the digital age, penmanship is becoming a lost art.

Exiled on Main Street

Caplan’s , a fixture in the Ellicott City antiques business community is closing up shop on Main Street after 23 years. According to this story by Kim Lemmonds in Ellicott City Patch, “the store will be closing in late January.”

On the surface this closing could be seen as another setback to the retail health of the historic district. Just before Christmas, The Good Life Market announced that it too would be closing by the end of this month after six years. In both cases the owners of these stores were heavily involved in promoting Ellicott City.

That’s where the similarity ends though. The Good Life Market is closing up shop for good. Caplan’s is simply moving out of their Main Street location because they could not work out favorable lease renewal terms with their landlord.

In March of 2004, the 8,700 square foot former department store was sold to a partnership that includes Don Reuwer, Bruce Taylor and Jared Spahn. The new owners plan to renovate the property which includes a vacant parcel of land behind the store. According to this story by Jackie Powder in The Sun, “the businessmen hope to build apartments on a vacant lot behind it that extends to St. Paul Street.”

The departure of Caplan’s will allow that redevelopment program to move forward in earnest and the net result will actually benefit the old mill town.

The End of the Good Life

The Good Life Market in Ellicott City is closing. After six years of breathing new life in their little corner of Ellicott City, Randy and Steve are selling everything and closing up shop. Their closing will be felt in the tight knit retail community in the historic district. The Good Life Market was an anchor of the Second Sunday Markets and it’s closing casts a shadow over the viability of future Second Sundays.

I understand that these guys will be leaving Ellicott City altogether, reportedly heading to Portugal. I also understand that Monah, their Bernese mountain dog will remain in the old mill town with friends.