THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, March 9, 1995 TAG: 9503090389
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY STEPHANIE STOUGHTON, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CAPE CHARLES LENGTH: Medium: 95 lines
The furniture store shut down, along with the discount clothing outlet. An ice cream chain wanted to open here, but bolted after glancing at the coastal town's demographics.
An exodus of retailers, people and industry has lasted decades, leaving Cape Charles' downtown with an abandoned building overgrown with trees and many storefront windows stamped with ``FOR LEASE'' signs.
So when McCrory, the discount variety store, first announced plans to leave its downtown location, people begged it to stay.
That was about seven years ago, when the landlord cut the store's rent in half and purchased the second building that the company occupied so he could keep the business' costs low.
``I realized that they were a big employer and that they had a payroll here,'' said William Porter, the landlord. ``McCrory was probably the last holdout semi-department store. All the rest . . . are gone.''
The struggling chain recently closed its Cape Charles store and several others, abandoning Virginia's Eastern Shore and leaving just one store in Hampton Roads. The debt-laden company, crushed by Wal-Mart and its own internal problems, closed a Norfolk store on Little Creek Road and another in Bayside Shopping Center in Virginia Beach.
McCrory Stores, the York, Penn.-based division of McCrory Corp., said it will close another store on Norfolk's Granby Street by week's end. The company's Military Circle store in Norfolk is not on the closing list.
While Hampton Roads' residents will miss the old five-and-dimes, there are few places where McCrory's restructuring will hurt more than in the coastal town of Cape Charles.
In Virginia Beach and Norfolk, there are the Wal-Marts, the Rose's and the Kmarts to fill the void. Cape Charles residents said they now will have to drive more than 20 miles to get the nearest discount department store.
``I've lived in Cape Charles all my life, and we've always had a five-and-dime,'' said Charles Spencer, wiping his hands on his work apron. ``But the town is slowly dying more and more. There's no work down here.''
``I don't know why they closed,'' Spencer said as he wheeled grocery carts at the downtown Bayshore Markets. ``I thought they stayed real busy.''
But there are no hard feelings.
The discount store stayed even when it couldn't afford air conditioning the past two summers, landlord Porter said. And it stayed even when its customers - the residents of this boom-and-bust town - grew poorer and fewer in numbers.
``One thing that is to be said about McCrory - they were a good tenant,'' Porter said. ``They tried hard to maintain that store, and I feel deeply gratified that they stayed as long as they did for the sake of the town.''
The store is unlike the large McCrory outlets that once dotted strip malls across the nation. Despite its torn candy-striped awning, cracked window and lack of air-conditioning - customers say the store was a place where the sales clerk would always ask, ``What can I do for you?''
McCrory had been in its Mason Avenue building, once a 21-room hotel, since the 1960s, Porter said. Before that, McCrory was located just down the street, he said.
Town manager Dick Barton said he thought the store first opened in the 1930s, but other longtime residents said it opened much earlier.
Azile Downing, librarian at the Cape Charles Memorial Library, said she worked at McCrory for $1 a day in the early 1930s.
``I can't remember when it wasn't there,'' she said. ``At the time, we thought it was a big thing. It was McCrory. It was the only store of that kind in town.''
McCrory's public relations department did not return telephone calls Wednesday.
Cape Charles bustled when it sat at the end of a busy Northeast rail corridor. But the railroad stopped carrying passengers in the 1950s, and the steamer ferries to Norfolk moved elsewhere.
Then came the decline.
The loss of McCrory follows the departure of a number of big businesses from the area, said Tim Hayes, director of sustainable development for Northampton County. Both the county and Cape Charles hope an aggressive economic development plan, including an industrial eco-park in the town, will help create new jobs.
``It hurts,'' Hayes said. ``That's why there's such a drive to create a lasting, strong economy here.
``We can't fail.'' ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photo]
TAMARA VONINSKI/Staff
ABOVE: The closing of the McCrory store in Cape Charles is only the
latest chapter in the coastal town's decline. "For lease" signs dot
the windows of many downtown storefronts.
LEFT: Charles Spencer, with his wife, Mary Ann, in their truck on
Mason Avenue in Cape Charles, says of the closing: "I've lived in
Cape Charles all my life, and we've always had a five-and-dime. But
the town is slowly dying more and more. There's no work down here."
by CNB