Family-Run Hardware Store on the Chopping Block
A Lower Manhattan institution is poised to disappear. Dick’s Cut Rate Hardware, at Nine Gold Street (across from the massive residential building Two Gold Street and around the corner from Louise Nevelson Plaza) is likely to close soon, a casualty of turbulent market dynamics in local real estate.
Crammed with just about anything one could ever need, its skinny aisles are overflowing with electrical supplies, tools, building materials, plumbing supplies, lights, paint, garden products, housewares, and cleaning products. Keys are made and advice is freely dispensed.
“I am heartbroken,” says owner Shaul Yamin, whose great-cousin Nathan founded the shop in 1956 after working for many years at another hardware store owned by a man named Dick. “The actual owner never came to the store,” recalls Mr. Yamin, “and Nathan ran it. So everyone called him ‘Dick,’ which made it natural for him to use this name when he opened his own shop.”
Mr. Yamin, who was born the year that Dick’s opened, grew up working and playing in his cousin’s store, originally located at 161 Greenwich Street (photograph at right), in a now-vanished district known as Radio Row for the electronics repair shops clustered there. When this area was seized and demolished in the 1960s to make for the World Trade Center, Nathan moved the store to 205 Pearl Street. When that building was knocked down in the early 2000s to make way for the luxury high-rise Two Gold Street, Dick’s moved to its current location, across from Two Gold.
Beloved by local residents and workers, Dick’s fulfills many needs. Downtowner Josh Brown, who lives on Liberty Street, says, “I’ve been coming to Dick’s almost from the day we moved into this community a decade ago. It is very different from other stores in neighborhood. This is a place where you walk in with a problem and get advice about a practical solution, even if it doesn’t involve buying something.”
In 2003, as the new store opened its doors, Mr. Yamin took over the operation from his cousin. “We have always been the place where the neighborhood came for essentials,” he says. “We have building supplies for local superintendents and contractors, and during the pandemic, we carried toilet paper, gloves, and masks when nobody else could get them. We have been here through September 11, 2001, through floods and blackouts. And for years, we have extended credit to customers who were in financial distress.”
“The old owner promised never to throw me out,” Mr. Yamin says. “He said we were like family. But the new owners called and said I will have to leave. All of the other tenants have vacated, because the rents they were asked to pay were exorbitant.”
“Landlords used to have a relationship with their small business tenants, but now it’s just about the money and how much they can get,” Mr. Yamin says. “This is very hurtful, because I am old school about living up to my word.”
The former owner of Nine Gold Street, Paul Wasserman, would say only that his firm A.M. Properties “no longer controls the asset.” The new owners could not be reached for comment.
“We’re still paying our rent, and haven’t received an eviction notice yet,” Mr. Yamin says. “But the people who bought the building have told me to go. Their real estate broker has shown me half a dozen other stores in the neighborhood, but none of the rents are realistic for a small business like mine.”
“It is harder and harder to build a new business,” he adds. “Relocation is expensive and time consuming. We order our inventory a year in advance. And I’m not a young man. I’m going to be 69 years old in a few weeks.”
Mr. Yamin had hoped to pass the business on to his daughter, Daniella, aged 35, who has worked there for more than a decade. “She even has a tattoo of a hammer on her hand,” he says. The plan was to make partners of one or more longtime employees (such as April Peterson, who has worked at Dick’s for 25 years), and then draw retirement income from the business, as an investor.
“That plan is off the table,” he says. “There is essentially no chance we can stay at this location, and maybe a 50 percent chance of finding a new place nearby. I have no idea what Daniella will do. In the meantime, she has told me to stop trusting people.”
As the many loyal customers find out the news, they are saddened. “This neighborhood becomes a lesser, poorer place every time we lose a family-owned small business like this one,” Mr. Brown says. “These are the building blocks of community. Sometimes, businesses fail. But when a thriving store is forced out, this should make people angry. It is a very bad thing for everybody.”