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Amid big box stores, she's unique

By MELISSA TULLY
Published September 5, 2005

BEVERLY HILLS - Beverly Hills Hardware on County Road 491 didn't face a lot of competition in its successful 37-year run. On the contrary, the store was opened to meet the demands of area building contractors and homeowners during the home building boom of the 1970s.

But store owner Kelly Gardiner, 78, is closing her doors in mid September simply because it's time for her to move on to more leisurely pursuits.

Gardiner's daughter, Kelley Melton, who helps run the store, said the closing will be "bittersweet." Running the business demands long hours, but it has provided a true sense of accomplishment.

The pair works in the store six days a week, from open until close, and they remained open during the troublesome 2004 hurricane season. "We never have lunch. We eat while we work," Melton said.

Another challenge the women faced was serving a predominantly male clientele. Gardiner said that, for many years, her customers' first question was: Is there a man here?

"It was a different generation," Melton said. "Women have come a long way."

Indeed, Gardiner can build and make repairs with the best of men. Before opening the hardware store, she worked alongside her husband refurbishing homes for the Federal Housing Administration in Clearwater.

Melton explained that, over the years, a hometown dynamic has developed in the plaza that houses the hardware store. Gardiner said that when she opened the store "there was nothing here but me and dirt." Now the store is situated between a barbershop and a produce market, and "people come down here to get the news."

Gardiner and Melton said their customers don't want them to close their doors. They like the convenience of smaller stores. Melton said one reason hometown hardware stores are necessary is that larger ones "aren't geared toward older people."

"They can maneuver in here, or if they need something, I'll run over and get it for them," she said. We "try to keep it personal, they don't. Maybe they can't, I don't know."

Saturday, Melton rattled off the names of some of the store's most loyal customers over the years as she puffed on a cigarette. There's Mr. Brown and Miss Mary and the people from Our Lady of Grace Catholic Church. There's the man from Black Diamond Construction and Twisted Oaks Golf Club and the Buechly couple of Beverly Hills.

Dolly Phillips wasn't at all pleased when she heard the hardware store was closing. Phillips, 68, and her husband Glenn, 69, drop by often to pick up odds and ends for their Beverly Hills home.

"We're going to miss this little store," she said.

Saturday afternoon, she stopped by for some mineral spirits. But the going-out-of-business sale has been going on for a while, and the store was all out.

"(My husband's) going to have to go to Home Depot," she said. "It's just a chore."

Her husband's always asking her to bring home things she doesn't know much about, she said. That's why she's been a regular at Beverly Hills Hardware for three years.

The sales people at those big hardware places aren't always helpful, not like the ones here, she said. At this hardware store, they'd take as much time as she needed.

Melton said customers also kept shopping at their store because it stocked many hard-to-find odds and ends that could still be purchased individually.

"We have a lot of older parts (like) cranks for the old windows," said Melton.

Upon closing, Gardiner plans to sell some of the inventory to a small hardware store in Inglis and donate some to Habitat for Humanity.

After a lot of hard work, Gardiner is looking forward to retirement. She hopes to take a few vacations, possibly a few cruises. Thinking back over the life of her business, she became teary eyed. The best thing about owning the store, she said, was "the fact that I could do it."

--Times staff writer Abbie VanSickle contributed to this report.

[Last modified September 5, 2005, 01:15:10]