the closing of Stuart Shaines marks a new chapter for Portsmouth retail 
Stuart Shaines Menswear is a monument to a time in retail history that is all but forgotten. The two-level store on lower Congress Street looks like it hasn’t aged since the early 1970s when it first opened. Fine silk ties, tweed jackets and wool slacks line the walls in a variety of colors and textures. Tuxedo shirts and bowler hats are displayed with care, hearkening to a time when customer service was a top priority and working men outfitted themselves in classic styles.

the closing of Stuart Shaines marks a new chapter for Portsmouth retail
Stuart Shaines Menswear is a monument to a time in retail history that is all but forgotten. The two-level store on lower Congress Street looks like it hasn’t aged since the early 1970s when it first opened. Fine silk ties, tweed jackets and wool slacks line the walls in a variety of colors and textures. Tuxedo shirts and bowler hats are displayed with care, hearkening to a time when customer service was a top priority and working men outfitted themselves in classic styles.

Shaines is a piece of living history himself. At age 77, he has not only seen but facilitated many of the changes taking place downtown over the last 40 years. With his large, imposing frame, fashionable wardrobe and certain aura of self confidence, Shaines is a force to be reckoned with. A shrewd businessman, he’s worked hard to build his empire. Now, after 56 years of working nearly seven days a week, Shaines is retiring. The closing of the store marks the start of another chapter in the history of Portsmouth.

Menswear is a division of retailing that now only exists in high-end designer fashion. Shaines partly blames the Internet, where shoppers can buy whatever they want or need with the click of a button. “The world is our competition now,” Shaines says. “The consumer dollar can be spent in many places.”

Shaines prided his store on being a “destination shop,” where customers would travel not only for merchandise but customer service, and could buy everything they needed in one place, from socks to hats and everything in between. “People now have reasons not to get in their car and go anywhere. Our problem is how to get our share,” he says.  

Shaines has worked in retail since 1954, when he opened his first menswear store in Dover. In 1972, he opened the Stuart Shaines storefront in Portsmouth. Those were the days before credit cards, when locals had charge accounts in every store they shopped at, many of which were located downtown but specialized in everyday products that people needed.

Until 1971, his company was housed on the entire top floor of 140 Congress St., the building where Nahcotta Gallery, Joe’s Pizza and Second Time Around are now located. It was a warehouse and operations center. Shaines owned one of the first computers in the area, a floor-to-ceiling contraption that needed its own cooling unit and made such a racket that it had to be kept in a separate room. He also printed the first color newspaper ad in Foster’s Daily Democrat, and was the first menswear proprietor to use television as an advertising medium.

Robert Breneman, owner of G. Willikers children’s shop, was 14 when his family’s store first opened in 1978. He remembers other downtown staples that have closed their doors over the years: Peavey’s Hardware, Green’s drugstore and several men’s retailers. In the 1970s, support for local history and the arts became a top priority, and downtown morphed into a cultural destination. “With the Music Hall and Strawbery Banke Museum picking up speed, you could feel back then that things were happening,” Breneman says, referring to the revitalization of downtown.

Breneman’s customer base hasn’t entirely changed, even though Portsmouth has. “July and August are next to the holiday season as our busiest time of year,” he says. “Local residents are still the backbone of our customer base, and we would not be here without that. We are still supported most strongly by residents. I don’t know if that’s the case for other shops.” 

Tom Holbrook, owner of RiverRun Bookstore, agrees that locals keep his store alive. “Tourists always say to me: ‘We had a great little bookstore like this in our town, until Barnes and Noble put it out of business.’ And I always say, ‘Barnes and Noble didn’t put it out of business, your townspeople did by not being careful with their choices.’ If you want a vibrant and culturally interesting downtown, you have to think carefully about where you spend your money.”

RiverRun Bookstore has been downtown for five years, and recently moved into a new mixed-use building in Market Square. Helene M., a women’s retailer based in Portland, Maine, recently opened next door and hopes to attract loyal customers that keep coming back. In the three weeks the store has been open, manager Eva Roberts says that she’s seen a mix of locals and tourists, and calls Portsmouth a “go-to place” for vacationers from all over New England.
Today, there are a variety of specialty stores that cater to a very specific clientele, but fine men’s clothing is one niche that is falling by the wayside. Young men don’t even think of Stuart Shaines when looking for a jacket or shirt, heading instead to chain retailers like Banana Republic or Gap, both of which have locations downtown.

“They’re not men’s retailers,” Shaines says. “They are stores that carry men’s items. We are the last in line of better menswear stores.” At one point, there were seven men’s-only clothing stores in Portsmouth. “Hopefully, we will be missed,” Shaines reflects. “Unfortunately, a lot of our customer base depended upon us and we feel badly that we’re leaving. These people will find the Internet and other shops that will cater to their needs, but not as well as we did.”

Shaines calls Portsmouth “a wonderful place to be in business,” though it wasn’t always as lively as it is today. When shoppers flocked to the newly opened malls in the early 1980s, Shaines took his business where the consumers wanted to shop, opening stores at the Fox Run-adjacent and now defunct Newington Mall, the Mall of New Hampshire and the Maine Mall, as well as storefronts in Durham, Dover and Concord, owning a total of nine menswear stores throughout the years.

“We saw at the mall a different customer than we saw downtown,” Shaines says. “We were in both places so we didn’t lose.” All of those stores are now closed, except the downtown location, which was Shaines’ first menswear store and is now his last.

Shaines is nostalgic about the 56 years he has spent retailing on the Seacoast. A University of New Hampshire graduate and veteran of the Korean War, he almost made the military his career. However, his parents were in the shoe business and he decided to give retail a try.

Shaines says his business philosophy is to make his customers happy, to make them laugh and keep them coming back. He’s also made a point of civic participation. In 1962-63, Shaines was mayor of Dover. He was also a trustee of the University System of New Hampshire from 1978 to 1984, and was on the board of the Port Authority from 1984 to 1986.

He says public service not only helps the community, but helps business. “The customers see you in a different role from time to time,” he says. “I use the expression: there are no strangers in life, only friends yet to meet.” A picture of two people shaking hands is prominently displayed on Shaines’ business cards.

Many of his employees have been at the store for years. Deborah Moffett, Shaines’ administrative assistant, has been with the company since 1988. Shaines says that he expects a lot out of his employees, especially dedication. “The one thing about retailing is it’s truly a work ethic. It’s a way of life,” he says. “People aren’t enchanted with what they do anymore. You never hear about people who have been 10, 15, 20 years in a job anymore. If you look at the average resume today, it reads like a storybook. It’s lack of commitment.”

A former owner of The Hill and the Vaughan Mall parking lot, Shaines is a figurehead in the Portsmouth business milieu. He built the Worth Building, where his store is located, in 1971, funded by his partners in the Worth Development Corporation, and he still oversees its operations. Currently housing the Friendly Toast, the Portsmouth Health Food Store, Somnia, Pesce Blue and The Wire, the building is a staple of downtown. But Shaines is not only closing his store but also selling the building, catapulting downtown into yet another change that will re-shape the lower half of Congress Street.
The Worth Building is being cosmetically improved to be more attractive to potential buyers. Shaines himself doesn’t yet know what will go into his storefront.

The building consists of retail units downstairs and office suites upstairs, which will all be sold individually as condominiums. The current tenants have the first right of refusal to buy their spaces. Shaines doesn’t remember how much the building originally cost to build in 1971, but if all units sell at asking price, the price tag will be more than $10 million.

Brian Gahan, owner of Somnia, has a lease on his storefront that lasts another five years. “If we could afford to buy, we would,” he says. Somnia will consider other spaces in town when the lease runs out, in order to serve its local following and attract walk-in business. “We can’t be homeless,” Gahan says, smiling. “We’ll find somewhere to go.”

Portsmouth landmark The Friendly Toast is also trying to figure out how to deal with Shaines’ decision to sell. Open at their present location since 1996, owner Melissa Jasper remembers moving from Dover. “Customers had a hard time finding us again,” she says. “I would hate to move for that reason.” Jasper has opted not to buy and instead remains focused on living out the term of her lease, which expires in two years.

The adjacent Franklin Block also recently decided to go condo. The decisions were nearly simultaneous, says Dana Levenson, a chairperson for the City Economic Development Commission. “It’s response to the marketplace, to the demand downtown. Property appraisals came out and there was a significant increase in downtown real estate. Downtown is hot property.”

Choozy Shooz and Le Club Boutique have shared space on the first floor of the Franklin Block building for 20 years. Jane Holt bought Choozy Shooz a year ago, and Beth Gross-Santos has owned Le Club Boutique for two decades. Both women express concern over the sale of the building, and Holt is worried that Portsmouth will “go corporate.” However, Holt sees more Serendipity bags on the streets than Banana Republic, and she thinks that most locals don’t shop regularly at the chain stores. She loves what she calls “a strong, regular crowd of locals.” Gross-Santos agrees that the tourists are simply the “icing on the cake,” and what she likes to see in her store are families shopping together.

Changes downtown won’t end with the sale of the buildings, and even extend to the streets themselves. Nancy Carmer, city Economic Development program manager, says the lower half of Congress Street will see road and streetscape improvements, such as the planting of more trees. Historic reproduction street lamps, similar to those on Court Street, also will be installed. “This effort is key to attracting shoppers and retailers to this part of town,” she says. An improved streetscape improves the outlook for the sale of retail space in the Worth Building. However, the asking prices might make it impossible for local business to move in.

A recent article in the Portsmouth Herald on rising commercial property values downtown noted that buildings owned by two local businesses, Peavey’s Hardware and Eagle Photo, sold for $2 million and $1.7 million, respectively, within the last 14 months. Prime retail space rents for $42 a square foot.

Shaines’ fondest memory is from the fall of 1972, when the store first opened its doors. He remembers how exciting it was to see the building come up from the ground.

One his smartest business moves was taking control of the parking lot behind his building during the heyday of the Urban Renewal program in the early 1970s. Carmer says, “The parking lot associated with (the Worth Building) is key to commerce and pedestrian activity that emanates from there.” It certainly has been key to keeping Shaines’ store open for as long as it has, providing the store with a constant flow of customers.

The Urban Renewal program offered the city two dollars for every dollar spent restoring and upgrading the downtown area, but there were costs as well. Strawbery Banke Museum, now one of the city’s cultural and historic highlights, was borne out of the program at the cost of an ethnic neighborhood on the waterfront, and a colorful Italian neighborhood was demolished where the Sheraton Hotel and its adjacent parking lot are now located. Shopkeepers were encouraged to redesign their storefronts, and benches, trees and flower beds were installed in Market Square, making Portsmouth the inviting tourist destination that it is today.

Following the plans for urban renewal, Shaines, his brother Robert, and their business partner Arnold Fishbein leased the Worth parking lot to the city of Portsmouth for one dollar in 1973. The specifications of the lease included that the city maintain the lot. The lease ended in July 2006, when the city took full control of the proprety. Plans for a four-story parking garage, or a parking garage with lower-level retail and restaurant space, are being talked about. The parking spaces will be sold or leased to individual buyers within the building.

Though Shaines has made his decision to close, he isn’t in a huge hurry. “We’ll be here until the last gun is fired,” he says. “When it’s over, it’s over. We had a good run. We gave it a good effort.” Shaines predicts the store will be open at least until the end of the year.

Shaines seriously contemplated selling the store in order to keep it open. “The end result is that there aren’t a lot of people who have the work ethic that we did,” he says. “The matter becomes a problem of investing and developing the business. If I had the kind of money it would take to buy this business, I’d be in Vegas,” he says, laughing. 

Shaines’ retirement is bittersweet. He doesn’t plan on being any less busy, but will now spend more time with his family and at his second home in St. Augustine, Fla. Shaines now lives in Exeter with his wife, Zoe. They have six children and 10 grandchildren. He calls himself and Zoe “professional grandparents.”

As Stuart Shaines’ run draws to a close, he remembers what makes Portsmouth a great place to live and to visit.
“People come to Portsmouth because it’s quaint, it’s unique,” he says. “There’s a lot of fantastic places to dine. But people make a community, not buildings. We’ve been in the people business all our lives.”