Williams Store Plan Irks Local Merchants
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — Some Spring Street merchants, concerned that Williams College's plan to include a convenience store with evening hours in its proposed new student center on campus will siphon off their business, are considering forming a local merchants' association.
They also hope to talk college officials out of the convenience store plan.
"We are truly concerned for the future of Hart's Pharmacy on Spring Street and for the mix of shops on Spring Street that serve the whole community," said Steven T. Wiehl, pharmacist and owner of the 100-year-old Hart's Pharmacy. "We have concerns about what the college is planning on doing. Hopefully, after they're informed about the impact, they won't do it."
College officials say they need to meet the needs of students who can't find time to obtain the items they need, or perhaps to determine whether they need them, until evening. Also, convenience stores seem to be part of the trend toward larger and more comprehensive student centers that college students have come to expect, according to Helen Ouellette, Williams vice president for administration and treasurer.
"I don't know of a student center anywhere that doesn't have this sort of thing, and most of them are open all day," Ouellette said Tuesday. "Right now, on the drawing board is a very small space in the student center that would be open in the evening so students can buy the simple things they say they need — laundry detergent, feminine supplies, six-packs of Coke."
Ouellette met with a group of merchants at the end of March to update them on the college's plans for the center, a larger replacement for Baxter Hall that is scheduled to start construction this fall. She also plans to meet with a focus group of students and merchants on April 26.
"We're putting together a focus group of students and merchants to help merchants understand what it is they are looking for," she said. "It's also to educate both sides on what's already available." She added, "Students sleep late, go to classes, play sports, have dinner and only then come up for air and are up until 3 a.m. After 5 or 6 p.m., there's no opportunity to buy things they need.
"They would have to drive down Route 2 for simple basics. A lot of what we would be selling we're already selling in the snack bar, but we would be adding toiletries. I doubt many of them find time during the course of the day to think about what their needs are and lay in supplies. My guess is most of this happens in the evening. While acknowledging the concerns of Spring Street merchants about the convenience store, she said, "At this point it is still in the plans. We remain convinced it is a service we need to provide."
"We don't want to compete with the folks on Spring Street," she maintained, adding the college would like a Spring Street merchant to take on the convenience store operation. "Many of the items we will be selling are things not currently available on the street," she said.
She also acknowledged the possibility that students, knowing they could purchase an item later in the evening, on campus, might be even less likely to make time to walk down to Spring Street earlier.
"It's certainly a risk," she said. Voula Nikolakopoulos, owner of Pappa Charlie's deli, said she does not expect her business to be diminished but believed the additional services on campus would affect other Spring Street merchants. "They've always had food," said Nikolakopoulos, by way of illustration.
But when Goodrich Hall, which offers students a variety of snacks and beverages, opened nearby in the late 1990s, her breakfast business "was impacted tremendously." One of her deliverymen used to bring her 20 to 30 cases of a juice drink, and that has now dropped to 15 cases, she said. She said the same deliveryman told her he was leaving 50 cases at Goodrich now.
"This is a small town," she said. "The college needs to be sensitive to the needs of the business community. It's our survival, basically." She added, "They [the college] paid a lot of money for a consultant to evaluate the street, and they say they want to listen. It's important to maintain what we already have."
Nikolakopoulos noted that when the annual holiday craft fair was moved from the Faculty House to Towne Field House and food was sold, restaurant business for that day dropped off.
"A lot of businesses in this town are on the brink," she said. "Three to four months of tourists is not enough. Does the college really need to provide everything for the students? Could the students start planning? We depend on tourists. We depend on students, and we treasure our local clientele. But you can't make it just on locals."
Hart's Pharmacy, its window ledges trimmed with gleaming copper, has been on Spring Street since before 1908, when the late Philip Hart's father, Walter, bought the former Wallace & Briggs business. Proprietor Wiehl showcases the store's antique features — porcelain apothecary jars line a ledge above the displays, and a case by the cash register holds antique mortars and pestles, used long ago for pulverizing ingredients.
More than a source for hairspray and hand lotion, Hart's can be relied on for a bottle of Guerlain's Shalimar, Roger Gallet sandalwood soap, Caswell-Massey cucumber and elderflower lotion and Pears hairbrushes. Small, plush Beanie Babies inhabit a sizable amount of shelving.
And steady customers too ill to emerge from their sickbeds to fetch their prescriptions have been assured that the pharmacist will drop them off at their homes.
"We always accommodate our customers," Wiehl said. "We carry what our customers want. Service has always been our mainstay. We have given our heart and soul to the community."
He referred to Hart's and other Spring Street stores as "a tradition."
"I know the alumni wouldn't like to see another closure after the House of Walsh and B & L service station," he said.
The perceived threat to Hart's comes at a time when independently owned drug stores are an endangered species, under siege from big box national chains, he said, adding that only a niche and personal service are their keys to survival.
"We have to work extra hard," Wiehl said. "It does take a little extra effort to maintain an old business in the modern world."
He recalls Hart's good relationship with the college health center and said he works hard to solve insurance problems on a routine basis.
"The students are our business," he said. The proposed convenience store, he said, "will be carrying similar products — toiletries, feminine products, convenience items — to what we carry. Hart's relies predominantly on college personnel and students for our market. We've always tried to accommodate that market. For the college to take away those customers would put our business in jeopardy."
That business, he said, has already been affected by people who now mail away for their prescription, and by the increased co-payments demanded by health insurance companies. Hart's is a tenant of Williams College, which owns many of the buildings on Spring Street.
"If the college has an interest in maintaining a pharmacy on Spring Street, I should think they would be more inclined to help us. I think it's odd they're actually doing this. I always thought we were of value to the college. For them to directly compete was a shock," he said.
"We are a viable, strong business," he added. "I'm here for the long run. That's why I'm so concerned."
Another merchant who did not want her name used said, "What everybody is concerned about here is that we don't need foot traffic decreased. There are a lot of reassurances coming out [from the college], but is this just the tip of the iceberg? It could wind up being potentially more."
Tags: convenience store, spring street, Williams College,
