Antique store next door weighing options 

By Lloyd Garrison

In a blow to the already shaky state of retail business in downtown Norfolk, the shop owned by Tom and Celia McGowan at 6 Station Place will close its doors when its lease expires April 30. A decision on whether to close is still pending at Carnegie Hill Antiques next door.

Celia and Tom McGowan.

Tom McGowan, a Norfolk realtor, was instrumental in finding a buyer two years ago for the long vacant hardware store that was becoming an eyesore. But the new owner, Gary Schroen of New Hartford, is now confronted with having to find a replacement for McGowan’s Norfolk Tea and Trading Co., and quite likely for Ersebet Black, owner of Carnegie Hill Antiques, who rents the other half of the building.

“Eighty percent of townspeople,” says McGowan, “never showed up in our shop to learn that we had things for only a dollar and were not just another high end store.”

Citing the recent departure from the Greewoods Theater Building of Treasures, the gift shop, and Petria’s Boutique, due to lack of heat, McGowan sees a grim future ahead. “We are going from all buildings full to a ghost town,” he says.

Ersebet Black, who has a house with her husband on West Side Road, says she would like to stay open and has not made up her mind. “I will make a decision by the end of February,” she says. Black established Carnegie Hill Antiques less than a year ago as an extension of her shop in Manhattan with the same name.

“I love Norfolk,” she says. “I hope we will retire here. We just bought two plots for ourselves in the town cemetery. In my heart, I don’t want to close, but I may have to.”

When Schroen bought the empty hardware store two years ago, McGowan volunteered to be the first renter, taking the south half of the building for a shop managed by Celia McGowan. The McGowans, who are friends of the Blacks, helped persuade Ersebet Black to rent the building’s north end.

Following the hardware store’s tasteful renovation by Schroen, himself an experienced builder and renovator, it was hoped that the two new shops would help make Norfolk a more attractive destination for weekenders and tourists. But if Ersebet Black joins the McGowans in shutting the door, other downtown merchants are sure to feel the draft. Some Norfolk business owners make no secret of their fear that Schroen will have trouble finding new renters, and might well be forced to seek a new buyer.

All of which would fit a pattern of failure long attached to the property. The original hardware store was destroyed by fire in 1987 that was thought to be set by an arsonist. It was replaced by another hardware store that failed in 1998, leaving an empty shell of a structure that required a new roof and extensive repairs when Schroen took over in December, 2004.

Photo by Lloyd Garrison.