As Hanover clothing shop closes, officials examine downtown commerce

By RAY COUTURE

Valley News Correspondent

Published: 12-04-2022 8:49 PM

HANOVER — Clothing and jewelry shop Traditionally Trendy closed its doors last month after a 31-year run on Hanover’s Main Street, though owner Rocio Menoscal promises the store, along with a new venture selling hats, will continue sales online.

Traditionally Trendy is the latest in a string of retail store closings in Hanover in recent years. Dartmouth Bookstore closed at the end of 2018, along with more than 20 other downtown businesses over the last decade.

In the wake of the recent closings, Hanover Town Manager Alex Torpey said he’s organized a group of about 20 business owners to discuss ways the town can better support shops on Main Street and throughout downtown. He said conversations started when he took over as town manager in June and has involved regular meetings since October.

“We’re identifying some of the topics that we want to talk about and to figure (out) how we can move forward,” Torpey said. “With (store) openings and closings, in theory we want to be aware of everything that’s happening (to understand) if anything could’ve been done differently, sort of like an exit interview.”

For her part, Menoscal is now living full time in Long Island, N.Y., where she said she’s relaxing and spending time with her grandchildren after a lifetime of owning and running various clothing stores, first in New York City and then in Hanover with Traditionally Trendy.

Though Menoscal said she’s “retiring,” that’s only partially true, as she’ll continue selling merchandise on the Traditionally Trendy website and is starting a new site called “precious hats” where she’ll sell Panamas — wide-brimmed straw hats that first originated in Ecuador — along with hats from Greece.

Born in Riobamba, an Ecuadorian city nestled in the Valley of the Andes, Menoscal, 82, moved to New York City 55 years ago and opened up two shops that sold New York-themed clothing as well as jewelry. She said she never planned to open up a new store in the Upper Valley but was enticed by an opportunity after visiting Hanover in 1990 on a trip with her son, who was in college in Albany.

“We were (driving around) just looking, but not really looking for a place because I never thought I’d open a store in Hanover,” Menoscal said. “But I saw a ski shop (at 34 S. Main St.) that was going out of business and that was really interesting to me because Hanover looked (to be) a great place and there were so many shoppers around.”

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Menoscal said the shop owner told her he was closing because of family matters. A few months later, Menoscal’s new shop, Traditionally Trendy, occupied the space.

Using an approach similar to those she employed at her shops in Manhattan, which are still open, Menoscal wanted to capitalize on the biggest market in Hanover: Dartmouth College. Her store was a go-to shop for Dartmouth-themed apparel including shirts, sweatpants, sweatshirts, scarves, and even baby clothes — all emblazoned with the college’s signature green-and-white stripes or in its dark-green color.

Hanover was a bit more “quaint and quiet” when Traditionally Trendy first opened, Menoscal said, but really hasn’t changed much in the 31 years she was in business at 34 S. Main St. One subtle change was that Dartmouth students, whom she often hired (including the last two employees to work there), weren’t looking for jobs in town as frequently as when the store first opened.

Beyond that, Menoscal said she found Hanover to be a warm and inviting place. Of Ecuadorian and Spanish descent, Menoscal said friends advised her when searching for retail space in New York that she should be careful where she looked, not every neighborhood would easily welcome a person of her background.

“(In Hanover) everybody welcomed me,” Menoscal said. “It was a great experience.”

Menoscal originally decided to retire the store in 2019 but wanted to clear out her inventory first. Then the pandemic hit and made selling everything a “nightmare,” thus prolonging her final day until Nov. 24.

She said she received an outpouring of love, kind words and gifts from people over the last few months as the end neared. People she didn’t know would stop by and thank her — and beg her not to leave.

That had as much to do with her kind and talkative demeanor as it did with the items she sold.

“We just had a great relationship,” said Jarret Berke, owner of next-door neighbor Lou’s Restaurant and Bakery. “She came over here and got a coffee every day and whenever we saw her on the street she’d always stop and chat.

“She was a wonderful neighbor.”

FHR Properties, a limited-liability company based in Lebanon, owns the building at 34 S. Main. Its registered agent, Barry Schuster, said the company is evaluating its options for what comes next.

“It’s the sort of a thing that you have an opportunity now and what do you do with it?” Shuster said. “So (they’re) just thinking about it.”

As for what’s next downtown, Torpey is working on it. He said collaboration between businesses and Dartmouth College has been a consistent topic of interest at the meetings with local business owners. The group has also expressed a desire to figure out how to promote downtown businesses to people who live outside of Hanover and to Dartmouth students, Torpey said.

He also noted concerns have been raised about a lack of designated and accessible public restrooms, increasing the amount of general spaces in downtown for people to sit and eat and increasing the amount of publicly accessible transportation such as bikes and scooters.

Torpey said the group is still in its problem-finding phase and doesn’t want to get ahead of the business owners in the group when it comes to identifying potential solutions. He said the group expects to continue meeting every Monday twice a month through March of next year.

For Menoscal, though, the exit is bittersweet. She said she is sorry to go, but she’s due to “retire” and spend time with her grandchildren. With her family and shops in the city, she never really left New York, but commuted to and from Hanover — a five-hour drive each direction — every week for 31 years.

“If my home was close to Hanover,” Menoscal said. “I’d have never left.”

She has family in the Galapagos Islands and is planning a long vacation there for December, and then it’s back to managing her store just like she always has, but now she will do so online.

“I’m a workaholic,” Menoscal said, laughing.

Ray Couture can be reached at 1994rbc@gmail.com.

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