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Open and closed: Naples' Fifth Avenue South has changing face
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Doors are opening and closing up and down Fifth Avenue South.
Some entrepreneurs are leaving Naples’ main street, but as they pack up, others are painting walls, hanging signs and opening their stores.
D’Amzaleg Art Gallery, Gallery on 5th, Oushak Gallery and Trendy with a Twist already have said goodbye to Fifth, and soon Cottontails children’s apparel and Room Interior Philosophy will follow.
But as those merchants move out, the list of those moving in grows.
Recent openings and planned stores include 5th Avenue Footwear, Abbott’s Frozen Custard, Cache, Casall of Sweden, Engel & Völkers, Karen Walsh Haupt Studio on 5th, Pierre Bittar Gallery, Sushi Thai and White House/Black Market.
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Location was everything for Sal Cantone, owner of 5th Avenue Footwear, when he looked for a place to open his shop.
When Canton was considering the vacant space at 505 Fifth Ave. S. for his footwear business, he sat down for lunch at Cheeburger Cheeburger next door.
His view from the outdoor patio was directly into that vacant store — and he knew immediately that if he opened next to the restaurant, customers would be looking into his shop every day while waiting for their cheeseburgers and fries.
Since the shop opened on April 3, business has been steady, Cantone said.
He attributed his first month’s success to staying open late for the after-dinner crowd and offering specials on his comfortable men’s and women’s shoes from brands including Merrell, Spring Step, Think and Sebago.
“Fifth Avenue is an exciting place,” Cantone said. “You’re at the hub of Naples and you’re only four blocks from the beach.”
Just a few doors down, another tenant moved into 505 Fifth Ave. S. a few months earlier.
Impressionist artist Pierre Bittar came to Naples by way of Michigan, inspired by customers who told him his original artworks would be a hit in Southwest Florida.
Bittar left his native France in the 1980s and moved to northern Michigan, where he has owned and operated an art gallery dedicated to his work for 16 years. In November 2007, Bittar visited Naples for the first time and decided to open his second gallery on Fifth Avenue South.
Now, Impressionist scenes of Naples’ beaches, alleyways and shopping districts hang on the gallery’s white walls — and you might just see Bittar painting on a street some day, canvas shaded by a paint-speckled umbrella.
Another newcomer to the street, Casall of Sweden, plans to open early this week.
Owner Monica Bruneflod is moving her Swedish women’s activewear and leisurewear shop to 680 Fifth Ave. S., the former home of Gallery on 5th.
Bruneflod opened her business at Waterside Shops in October 1999, but after dealing with constant construction at the North Naples shopping center in recent years, she decided that her business needed to move elsewhere.
Bruneflod has signed a lease to go into The Mercato at U.S. 41 North and Vanderbilt Beach Road, but until that center is completed, Casall of Sweden will be on Fifth Avenue South.
“I did my homework. I’ve been everywhere in Naples,” Bruneflod said. “I asked other tenants on Fifth, I’ve been on Third, walking around asking how business is, and ... I figured out that Fifth was probably the best place for me.”
Abbott’s Frozen Custard, Engel & Völkers, Karen Walsh Haupt’s Studio on 5th and Sushi Thai also chose Fifth Avenue South in recent months, and their shops and restaurants already are open.
Cache and White House/Black Market will follow when the building under construction at 555 Fifth Ave. S. is completed.
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For Room Interior Philosophy owner Gary Shanabarger, May 31 will be bittersweet.
Shanabarger and his mom, Angela, will close up the shop at 533 Fifth Ave. S. that their family has operated for 14 years — but they won’t be going far.
Shanabarger, who took over the business management from his mom in 2003, decided to move into a new space on Fourth Avenue South after issues arose in his lease renegotiation this year.
For nearly a decade, the shop was called Grand Bay Custom Home Center and offered draperies, interior wood shutters, blinds and other window treatments in a shabby-chic style. Now, with Shanabarger at the helm, Room Interior Philosophy creates room designs that are “eclectic” and “magical.”
“We are stylists. We bring in the final element at the end, the magic,” Shanabarger said. “Designers bring us in to add the frosting.”
And the family business will continue to serve its interior design customers, just from a new location a block away.
In recent months, a handful of businesses have packed up and closed, including Gallery on 5th, Oushak Gallery, D’Amzaleg Art Gallery and Trendy with a Twist.
Bake’s Fifth Avenue Jewelers, which has been open at 720 Fifth Ave. S. for about a decade, has been advertising a going-out-of-business sale for months, but attempts to reach the owner for comment were unsuccessful. A store employee declined to comment for this story.
Across the street, Ashley Adams Fine Arts at 795 Fifth Ave. S. is closing one location — a 1,000-square-foot storefront on Fifth Avenue South — but is keeping a 3,000-square-foot showroom open just around the corner on Eighth Street South.
A little father west, Cottontails children’s clothing store is planning to close at 474 Fifth Ave. S., but owner Judy Wayland-Smith will continue to do business from her shop in the Fountain Park Centre at Airport-Pulling and Vanderbilt Beach roads.
Cottontails neighbors The Blue Mussel and The Lady from Haiti are both looking for new locations because their building is up for sale, but plan to stay open at 478 Fifth Ave. S. and 476 Fifth Ave. S., respectively, with month-to-month leases until they have to leave.
“I tell people to come look for us here first next season, and if not here, somewhere else on Fifth Avenue,” said Larry Liss, owner of The Blue Mussel, a shell shop that has been open in the same location since 1962.
Many businesses have come and gone since the shell shop opened 46 years ago, but even if Liss has to move from the store’s original location, he is determined to stay on Naples’ main street.
Comments
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The economy is fluctuating, and businesses in Naples will go through the ups and downs of this market.
However, the cyclical nature of this market will hopefully improve.
Let's keep our fingers crossed.
#1 Posted by beetlejuice on May 3, 2008 at 11:27 p.m. (Suggest removal)
The people who own a piece of the new Fifth Avenue have little reason to care how many businesses cycle through their doors. That's what the lease is for, to make sure they get theirs no matter what.
The rents prohibit the kind of functioning, connected business that exists on REAL Main Streets. What we've substituted on Fifth Avenue is fickle, not solid. It is trendy, not dependable. It is baubles, not a loaf of bread or a box of wood screws or a handful of white bucktails or mackeral spoons, depending on what's running.
There is only one REAL business along Fifth Avenue. It's the one you find along Third Street, out the East Trail, along Bonita Beach Road, threatening the heart of Golden Gate Estates. It infests all those homely strip malls hunching like beggars along our roads. It will not be ignored.
In a less avaricious, less generously capitalized market, Fifth Avenue might have remained as it once was, stable and useful, a real Main Street where hardware and groceries could be had. There was a pharmacy people trusted, and a newstand in a grimy arcade, across from the ice cream parlor, where you could get the Times on Sunday mornings.
But there was no money in that. The real businessmen went to work, building value. They brought in Duany, who, like a cosmic chiropractor, adjusted the town's battered and sclerotic spine until it strutted like Don Johnson.
We got a movie set, an amusement park dedicated to the materialistic consumer, a watering hole for eurotrash, hustlers and the latest independently wealthy "new and successful businessman." He's just arrived from wherever he was such a success, ready to display the acumen his trust fund affords him. We can't eat eggs at Dot's, but we get to read about 23-year-old restaurant moguls pissing away million-dollar investments and getting evicted, sued or both.
But real people living real lives in a real community don't need all those blocks filled with stores selling things no one needs.
The stores there now sell wants. They are the gift shops inside the gate of the theme park, nothing more than money traps. As long as the man doing the leasing gets his money, why should he care how many times the signs get changed?
With gas at $4 a gallon or more, it's going to be fun watching the economy fluctuate, beetlejuice. The Chinese hold all our tabs for that dirty little war in Iraq, and now they're bidding against us for oil on the world market. Porsche sells more cars in China than anywhere.
I wonder when you think we might see a serious "up" start to form?
#2 Posted by elnuestros on May 4, 2008 at 12:36 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Hey! ElNuestros!
You got it nailed..all I can add is "We're FREAKIN' Doomed!!!"
(Note three exclamations points to denote extreme urgency of Americas' situation. Thanx George.)
#3 Posted by YearRoundResident on May 4, 2008 at 9:47 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Why anyone would buy a porsche escapes me. Why pay so much for a fast car when nowhere can you legally drive over 70 mph? There's no place for groceries let alone kids, you strain your back getting in and out of it, you can't see oncoming traffic because you're eye level with the hubcaps of the surrounding SUV's
My Hemi SUV loaded with kids,groceries and all the rest of the junk we lug around beats a boxster at the quarter mile.
Let the Chinese have'm.
#4 Posted by Naplestango on May 4, 2008 at 12:53 p.m. (Suggest removal)
well written. I will treasure my memories of the old movie theater waaaaaaaay back when.
#5 Posted by BackRoadsWine on May 4, 2008 at 12:54 p.m. (Suggest removal)
We may be very grateful that the "eurotrash" continue to spend their euros here. Didn't your mummy tell you not to bite the hand that feeds you? Not a very bright remark to publish for ALL to read
#6 Posted by jimboaw on May 4, 2008 at 1:32 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Hey elnuestros, your comments are thoughtful and correct. Fifth Avenue is another example of the greedy goose that laid the golden eggs in Naples. City residents cry and complain that they want Naples to maintain its "charm" But how many of those complainers take their business to malls and chain restaurants? The landlords of these buildings could care less about how long their tenants have been on 5th Ave.
#7 Posted by ford46 on May 4, 2008 at 2:23 p.m. (Suggest removal)
oh yea i was planning on buying a pair of shoes from 5th ave. give me a break, and bye bye to the over priced crap.
#8 Posted by firetjm on May 5, 2008 at 12:35 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Hay Jimbo, #6, just remember the canoe race race is this weekend to celebrate that the dang SNOW BIRDS have gone HOME and we can get our roads and resturants back.
#9 Posted by RockfordGrad on May 5, 2008 at 3:27 p.m. (Suggest removal)
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