So long Main Street: W.R. Chance is saying goodbye after 69 years
It is one of three businesses closing after the end of the year
The oldest continuously run business on Main Street will be leaving after the holidays, ending a 69-year run in the heart of Annapolis.
W.R. Chance is one of three businesses closing after the end of the year, joining two other departures in recent months.
Brown Eyed Girl and Annapolis Running Shop will all be leaving after the holidays, following the departures of Capital Teas and Rice Workshop earlier this year. Both Brown Eyed Girl and Annapolis Running Shop have been on Main Street for at least a decade.
“We will be leaving this location and then depending on a lot of different things, we may come out as a smaller or more boutique jewelry store and designer,” said Bruce Chance, whose mother Jean will be retiring from the business after 45 years.
News of the departures comes as downtown Annapolis was set to mark its second week of late night shopping Thursday, Midnight Madness. Hundreds of area residents turn out to the annual event for the first three Thursdays in December.
The Chances own the buildings at 108 and 110 Main St., and are in negotiations to sell or lease the spaces. The jewelry store doesn’t have a set closing date but should be open until March or April.
Walter Russell Chase opened the store in 1949, with his son. Bruce Chase is the fourth generation of the family to help run it.
Jean Chance came into the business in
the 1970s after she and her husband bought the building.
“Time for me to do something different,” she said. “Relax a little bit. Time to move on. My son has been running it for 20 years.”
She said the business has generated wonderful memories and attracted wonderful customers.
“And I'm going to miss all that,” she said. Brown Eyed Girl will close at the end of December, according to a Facebook post. The bohemian women's fashion boutique has operated at the top of Main Street since 2005.
“I have loved unlocking the door, turning on the lights, and flipping the closed signs to open, in anticipation of something new and exciting each day,” owner Katherine Stanfield wrote. “But the lease has ended and this space comes with its own challenges. Time to reinvent and re brand!”
Stanfield did not immediately return a call to the store.
Annapolis Running Shop owners Jenny and Ryan Seth have run the business for five years, but they too announced a closing after the holidays.
“Over the last 12 months, we've come to realize the challenges of operating a small brick and mortar running business in Annapolis. We've split up our roles and have tried to keep the momentum in the community,” the Seths wrote on Facebook. “Our oldest daughter will be off to college soon, and we have had to deal with some serious health issues in our family.”
The three closings come as the city's economic development manager Hollis Minor is leaving. Minor attended meetings with the Main Street merchants during Mayor Gavin Buckley's bike lane pilot.
She will leave city employment on Dec. 31.
City spokeswoman Susan O'Brien said the city is exploring options for replacing Minor — including restructuring the economic development position.
Mayor Gavin Buckley recently visited Easton, where the city partners with a quasi-public economic development corporation to promote investment in the town.
O'Brien said Main Street vacancies are down over the last three years, from 9.1 percent vacant in 2015. The street is 5.1 percent vacant.
Alderwoman Elly Tierney, D-Ward 1, is pursuing vacancy legislation that would register vacant nonresidential properties and pursue some kind of progressive fee to re-register the property if it remains vacant.
“I think we already have the canvas in our historic structures and its uniqueness, we just need to market them,” she said. “I know there's avenues to do that, but at the same time, I know we don't have a real free market in the sense that we have certain developers that are keeping our rents high.”
Tierney said she is specifically targeting Harvey and Michael Blonder, the father and son businessmen who own and run several buildings and gift shop businesses downtown.
Some of the Blonder space is vacant.
“Hopefully, my legislation tells him that the city is watching,” she said. “It gives the landlords accountability.”
“Time for me to do something different”
- Jean Chance