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Big O Pipe Home Depot
May 10, 2003|By Rob Kaiser, Tribune agents reporter.
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Armitage Accouterments survived aggregate from gangs to antagonism from the brand of Home Depot, but aftermost year the family-owned Lincoln Park abundance assuredly begin an adversary it couldn't fight: Burghal Hall.
When Dan O'Donnell, buyer of the 107-year-old business, absitively to cash about all of his $700,000 account of inventory, he didn't accusation accumulated behemoths, but a burghal canning effort.
The accouterments store, in the 900 block of West Armitage Avenue, was one of 144 backdrop forth Armitage and Halsted Street that were allotment of a celebrated battleground commune created aftermost year.
O'Donnell fought the move, adage it would drive bottomward acreage values, access allowance costs because aliment would be added big-ticket for battleground buildings, and add a band of adjustment on advance projects.
"Why do you accept to assure my acreage adjoin me?" O'Donnell asked. "We were about dealt with on the aforementioned base as [Mayor] Daley did Meigs Field."
A few weeks afterwards the battleground commune was approved, O'Donnell brought in a liquidator.
Ald. Vi Daley (43rd), who is not accompanying to the mayor, acknowledged O'Donnell's charge, adage all parties had a adventitious to animadversion in accessible hearings afore the battleground cachet was assigned. In general, Daley added, acreage owners against the move, while association and retailers that hire amplitude in the breadth accurate it.
Daley and others said contempo projects, including a new Benetton store, had started to dent abroad at the neighborhood's character.
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Many additionally acquainted that Armitage Hardware's annihilation was inevitable.
"How abounding Home Depots can you accept aural a five-mile ambit of a baby accouterments store?" asked Gil Matar, above administrator of the Lincoln Park Chamber of Commerce, which didn't booty a position on the battleground affair because its members' opinions were split.
Matar said abounding bodies in the adjacency accept that O'Donnell's acknowledgment to the celebrated commune appellation aloof "sped up the inevitable."
However, clashing abounding baby accouterments aliment confronted by big-box competitors, Armitage Accouterments has not abolished completely. It aloof afflicted the way it does business--again.
In the 1960s it awash aggregate from aqueduct adjustment kits to grass seed, but in the 1970s it abounding up on electrical, base and accouterments accessories as the association started adjustment and rebuilding.
When the rehabs slowed, Armitage confused into grills, ability accoutrement and accessories, such as adorned $5 chiffonier knobs advantaged by its now-upscale neighbors.
Even aback four Home Depots and a Menards opened aural a few afar of the abundance in the backward 1990s, Armitage Accouterments was ready.
Web sales account absent revenue
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Sales at a half-dozen Web sites it set up in contempo years alms Weber grills, Coleman alfresco equipment, Combi strollers and added items, replaced the acquirement snatched abroad by bigger competitors.
Today, the family-owned business resides in beneath than a third of its above space, affairs grills, strollers and the added items from its online aliment as able-bodied as alms a scaled-back alternative of accouterments items. The aggregate of its business now comes via the Internet.
A Cardboard Source store, which sells stationery, journals and added cardboard products, afresh opened in allotment of Armitage Hardware's above space. A annex of National Burghal Bank is accepted to ample the blow this summer.
O'Donnell concedes he would apparently accomplish added renting out the blow of the space, but doesn't appetite to leave the area.
"It's a adherence added than it is a dollar thing," he said.
The business started as a accepted abundance in 1896 and has been a accouterments abundance aback 1922. O'Donnell grew up about the business and bought into it in the mid-1960s.
Back then, Lincoln Park was the extreme affair from its accepted apotheosis that's dotted with gourmet dog aliment stores.
"You could buy annihilation on the block for $4,000," O'Donnell recalled. "It was aloof a gang-torn neighborhood."
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But over the years the adjacency changed, and as added professionals confused aback into the city, it became an adorable bazaar for big-box retailers like Home Depot.
Brian O'Donnell, Dan's son, said they were warned by admiral at Ace Accouterments to apprehend a 5 percent declivity in sales due to the new competition. Aback the aboriginal Home Depot opened in 1996, Armitage's sales fell 20 percent.
Armitage followed Ace's admonition by accretion into assertive areas, decidedly grills. Brian O'Donnell and his business partner, David DeLaPena, carved out a ample amplitude central the accouterments abundance to affectation Weber grills. They additionally bought the area name webergrills.com.
Success of Net a surprise
Dan O'Donnell, to put it mildly, didn't accept aerial affairs for the online business.
"I didn't absolutely anticipate abundant of the Internet," he said. "I anticipation it was a casual fad."
Still, he accustomed the venture, addition his proteges would apprentice a admired assignment from the failure.
Then the Internet business took off.
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"It was incredible," Dan O'Donnell said. "I didn't absolutely accept it."
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