Rye Ridge Shopping Center: Bouton's Hallmark closes, former theater to expand
 Longtime Bouton’s Hallmark employees Ursula Rhoads (left) and Mary Ellen Spinogatti pose with owner Ed Bouton outside the closed store in the Rye Ridge Shopping Center last week. Spinogatti continues to work for Bouton as a buyer for his other stores and Rhoads is waiting anxiously for him to open another Hallmark store in the area. |
By Jananne Abel
The closing of Bouton’s Hallmark after 30 years in the Rye Ridge Shopping Center coincided with the center getting approval for a change of use of the former movie theater. The theater closed a year ago.
Hallmark’s last day of business was last Sunday. Two days later, on Tuesday, Sept. 23, the Rye Brook Board of Trustees approved a change of use to a mix of restaurant and retail and allowed the owner, Win Ridge Realty, to increase the square footage of the existing theater from 6,280 square feet to 12,017 square feet by adding a second level.
After a lengthy discussion, the board unanimously (with one member absent) approved the change with the condition that Win Ridge must come back to the board for approval in the event a single restaurant is interested in leasing more than 6,280 square feet of the total square footage. Some board members were concerned about noise and traffic since the shopping center is in a residential area and across the street from a school and wanted to have some say if there were to be a large restaurant tenant. Parking was also an issue.
“This type of condition is reasonable,” said Trustee Michael Brown. “It gives them the opportunity to put in a very large restaurant, the largest in Rye Brook.”
“Until we know the nature of the use, it’s kind of hard to assess the impact,” said Trustee Dean Santon.
Win Ridge, which has no specific tenants in mind for the space, agreed to this condition as long as the village put in writing that it would not set a precedent for approval of any further tenants in the shopping center.
The largest single user currently is Family Discount which leases 18,000 square feet of space.
Another condition, which Win Ridge had already agreed upon when the proposal was before the Rye Brook Planning Board, is that the easternmost entrance/ exit on Bowman Avenue be altered to create two distinct lanes exiting the site, and specifically a right turn lane, to avoid the queuing issue that currently exists.
“I think this is going to make a drastic improvement to the existing shopping center,” said Mayor Joan Feinstein about the exit modification. The mayor was anxious to reach an agreement on this application— which has been around for nine months—so Win Ridge can lease the space.
Win Ridge had also agreed upon the third condition: that any proposed restaurant or retail use or combination of the two be limited so that any change to those uses will require no more than 139 parking spaces.
Based on data collected, said Jim Ryan of John Meyer Consulting, hired by Win Ridge, there is sufficient parking to accommodate the additional square feet of space.
When there was a previous request to expand the theater to two floors, a calculation was done that 139 parking spaces were needed for that use, according to Steven Silverberg of White Plains, attorney for Win Ridge.
“If it is all retail, we have more spaces than required,” said Silverberg. “Ten thousand four hundred square feet would be the maximum permitted restaurant to stay within that amount of parking.” A restaurant use generates more parking than a retail space.
A parking study done at the shopping center in late June showed that during peak hours, there were 40 more spaces than are required. The center has a total of 740 parking spaces.
Craig Samson, Win Ridge senior vice president, said about tenants for the former theater space: “We’re always talking to people, but until they’re done, it’s unfair to discuss them.” He did confirm that, despite rumblings to the contrary, Olive Garden and Outback Steakhouse are not potential tenants.
Hallmark closing sad for many
Just as the demise of the Rye Ridge Theatre a year ago was the end of an era, so too is the closing of Bouton’s Hallmark.
Owner Ed Bouton was cleaning out his store last week in order to have it ready to turn over to the landlord by the end of September. By Wednesday it was devoid of merchandise or cabinetry, with no reminder of the welcoming atmosphere that kept customers returning on a regular basis over its 30-year history. Even the Hallmark sign on the building had been removed by the management that morning.
Bouton said he was sad to be leaving the shopping center because this was his first store which he purchased when he was just a few years out of college. However, unfortunately his 10-year lease, negotiated with the previous landlord, was up Sept. 30 and he and Win Ridge couldn’t come to terms on a new one.
“I’m pretty melancholy about it,” he said. “I wish we had been able to come to terms, but I have to be able to make a profit at the end of the day and it just wasn’t’ going to be feasible. We talked about different options, but nothing made economic sense.” Moving to the plaza level was one option discussed, but Bouton didn’t think the traffic there was sufficient.
“They want to go high end obviously,” said Bouton about the shopping center management.
Samson of Win Ridge said “Hallmark was a tenant here for many years and we were sorry we were unable to keep them at Rye Ridge.”
Samson said the 3,000-squarefoot space will be broken into two units and half of it will be leased to a store called Paper Tree which has another location in Scarsdale. The other half hasn’t been leased yet.
Paper Tree, said Samson, will provide custom stationery, paper products and gift items including cards. “It’s obviously not Hallmark,” he said, “but there are items to be purchased there that were at Hallmark.” In addition, he said, CVS and Family Discount carry Hallmark products and customers can buy greeting cards at D’Agostino and Finch’s.
Hallmark had previously been a Big Top variety store which had been converted to a Hallmark store two years before Bouton bought it. He was planning to have a 30th anniversary celebration on May 9, the date the store opened in 1978. That, however, was cancelled when lease negotiations weren’t going well. Instead the staff had a farewell dinner at Seaside Johnnie’s at Oakland Beach two weeks ago.
The comments customers made when staff members told them the store was closing was “a testament to them and their great customer service,” said Bouton.
“They sincerely were devastated by this closing,” said Ursula Rhoads of Port Chester, whom Bouton called “the face of the store for more than 20 years.” She started working there in 1988. “One wanted to picket,” said Rhoads.
“It was not a regular store,” she said, noting that customers brought staff members cake, cookies and Christmas presents.
In turn, the staff read cards for old-timers, wrote out Christmas cards for some, and knew many at least by their first name if they didn’t know their whole family. Some people just came by the store for a laugh.
“There was a bonding with the customers,” said Rhoads. “It was a family.” She said going to work was “coming to a part of the family you liked even more than the one you left.”
One little girl, now 8, said this was her favorite store, said Rhoads, recalling that her mother used to push her around in a carriage there when she was a baby.
An older woman passed by the closed store last week and said: “I’ll be darned. What next?”
Frank Fanelli, assistant superintendent of the Port Chester schools, who works out of the Port Chester Middle School building across the street, was buying coffee at Starbuck’s. He was surprised to learn Hallmark was closing, commenting that he went there every couple of weeks.
Joseph Fraioli, who works in Purchase, was reading the farewell sign in the window from the staff. He’s been going to Bouton’s Hallmark for 30 years and had long been forewarned by the staff about its closing. “It’s sad because it was a nice place to frequent, the staff was very helpful and it was a fun place to go,” he said. “The girls had a wonderful camaraderie amongst themselves.” Not to mention “the windows were always impeccable.”
“It really is a loss to this community, and he’ll realize it, too,” said Rhoads, speaking of the landlord.
Mary Ellen Spinogatti of White Plains was the manager of the Rye Ridge store for a number of years before becoming the buyer for all of Bouton’s stores. She said she raised her son, now 18, there and just celebrated her 22nd anniversary with the company.
“We wouldn’t be here this long if it wasn’t for him,” she said of Bouton.
Rhoads agreed. “It was the closest to an ideal situation you could ever get to, and that’s the truth.” She said every day was memorable.
While Spinogatti is still on board working for Bouton, Rhoads said she’s in a dinghy waiting to be picked up by him when he opens another store in the area.
Bouton, who lives in a neighboring community, said he’d like to open another store in the Sound Shore area and is keeping his eye open for the right location. “It’s challenging to find the right spot,” he said. He’s had a lot of experience buying and selling Hallmark stores over the years, so he should know. He currently owns stores in the Palisades Center Mall and the Galleria Mall in Middletown and recently sold three stores back to Hallmark.
“We do thrive on traffic,” he said, because a Hallmark store is not necessarily a destination.
Bouton, whose father was also in the retail business, expects to soon be opening a larger store in the county but outside the Sound Shore area where he will sell more gift items than he could at Rye Ridge.
Rye Ridge, said Bouton, is a convenient shopping center which has quite a bit to offer. He feels its upgrading over the past few years was urgently needed. He recalled gutting and renovating his store back in 1988, long before any of the other stores spruced up.
Bouton said any renovation is difficult because business suffers, but he feels the one at Rye Ridge was a huge improvement and helped in the long run. However, he said, the parking lot has never been as jammed as it was when he bought the business back in 1978.
“The big boxes opened up in Port Chester and visibly hurt the Kohl’s Center,” said Bouton, “and all the competition divides up the pie.”
Still, he said, “what they did is pretty smart looking with the awnings” and “they have done a great job creating a downtown community effect.” He said he’s gotten more positive comments about the overhaul than negative ones.
Bouton said a few retailers worked out deals with the landlord and a few chose to leave. Among those that chose to leave was Chocolates Plus which in August was replaced by Last Licks. The latter sells ice cream, sports memorabilia, sports-related gifts and candy.
“It will be interesting to see what happens with the doom and gloom economy,” Bouton concluded.
This is part of the October 3, 2008 online edition of Rye Brook Westmore News.
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