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Goodwill Amity closes downtown thrift shop
Goodwill Amity closes downtown thrift shop
February 04, 2008
Amberly Mcateer
Special to The Hamilton Spectator
Lucky Lucinou peered into the dark windows of the Goodwill second-hand store on King William Street, where he had shopped for many years.
A "closed for business" sign stared back.
The retail store has shut its doors to make way for a $3-million revamp of the building, which will house services for the disabled, jobless and youth at risk.
"It's just hard to believe it's gone," Lucinou said.
Business was poor at the downtown location, said Goodwill Amity president Paul Chapin, and donations were routinely stolen after hours.
The company spent $26,000 last year removing garbage from its donation area -- an extra expense it couldn't afford.
"There were dirty, ratty couches that we couldn't possibly sell, kitchen food scraps ... We even had dead animals in bags."
Chapin said that the building could be put to better use, and he worked with the public school board's youth-at-risk program and the community-run brain injury rehabilitation service.
Both projects will be moved to the King William Street building in the coming year.
As well, Chapin says the building's empty warehouse space will be transformed into a facility that will help Hamilton's poor and disabled find jobs.
Sam Hanna works with troubled youth at the John Howard Society, above the closed thrift shop.
He hopes the youth program will reduce the number of criminally involved young people he councils.
But closing the thrift shop "doesn't make too much sense," as many of the city's poorest -- who live nearby in conditions he compared to the former Soviet Union -- relied on it for their daily needs.
Theatre Aquarius, across the street from the Amity building, often used cheap props from the store for its productions, according to Shari Scandlan, who works in the box office.
Many women who work at the theatre bargain-hunted there several times a week, she said.
"I wouldn't want to see it vacant, I'll tell you that," she said, remembering a bar in the neighbourhood that turned into a "crack house" after it closed.
The success of the incoming programs will determine if the neighbourhood changes for better or worse, she said.
"If there's just going to be more kids outside smoking or more writing on the walls, that's no use to anyone."
Longtime resident Leonard Gillard passes the building everyday. He saw a lot of shoppers that were "just people trying to get by."
"That store did a lot of good ... it's a real shame for this city," he said, adding that many of the surrounding buildings are empty. "That's where they can put their employment centre ... People depend on that store and it should have been left alone."
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