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Davis Hardware To Close Its Doors

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BY CARL ORTH

The Suncoast News

Published: July 27, 2008

NEW PORT RICHEY - A landmark hardware store will bite the dust, yet the latest economic victim from the housing market collapse.

An institution for about half a century, Davis Hardware is closing soon.

Howard DuBrow, the owner the past four years, has decided to call it quits. The 60-year-old entrepreneur is searching for a job. So are two full-time and two part-time employees.

"Everybody is pretty scared now," DuBrow said.

Predictions by economists for another poor year in 2009 pretty much clinched his decision to close the doors at 6642 U.S. 19.

The store in the Davis Plaza shopping center has been sporting "Store Closing" 50 percent off signs.

The store has been closely tied with the construction industry, DuBrow said during a phone interview.

The housing market collapse spelled trouble in 2006, he recalled, as construction nearly ground to a halt.

"If they ain't workin', they ain't buying," DuBrow said about construction companies.

"The economy pretty much is in the tank," DuBrow added.

"Things were great in 2004," DuBrow remembered about when he took ownership in April 2004.

Hopes were high, as reflected in a 2006 profile of DuBrow in a New York Times article. A company merger had left DuBrow jobless in 2002. After 30 years of climbing corporate ladders, he decided to chuck the corporate rat race and become self-employed.

Another good year for the store was recorded in 2005. "It's been declining steadily ever since."

DuBrow was hoping to meet with a liquidator late this week to decide what to do with the remaining stock.

It's unclear if the management firm in Tennessee will find another firm to lease the space.

DuBrow hopes to remain in Pasco County, but it depends on the job. "This is where my home is."

A previous store owner, Ed Hancock, mourned the loss of the landmark store.

"It was a very good store and it has a lot of history," Hancock commented.

He and wife Gaylyn had owned Davis Hardware from 1998 to 2004 once Davis family members parted with the business. Now at Mercantile Bank, Hancock had gravitated back into the banking business, prompting the 2004 sale to DuBrow.

Competitors kept coming to west Pasco, Hancock said. Then Harbor Freight tools opened across the street.

He empathized with DuBrow who struggled mightily with a tough economy. "He did a very good job with the store." The lease renewal was coming due in a few months, which Hancock attributes as a factor for the store to shutter its doors.

"It's just one of those things that happen," Hancock concluded about the downturn in the economy.

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