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Christmas House's future is iffy

By MICHAEL KRUSE
Published January 11, 2007

BROOKSVILLE - The folks who run Rogers' Christmas House sent their employees home Wednesday morning and said the iconic Hernando County business is going to be closed for at least the next two weeks. But it could be closed much longer than that.

They could find an investor and reopen.

They could reopen restructured somehow.

Or they could close forever.

"I'm not ready to fold," marketing manager Ann Chapman said early Wednesday afternoon inside a quiet Christmas House. "I'm not ready to throw in the towel and say, 'Hey, we're done,' but we need two weeks to think about what we need. And we need to know what to do - the proper way to do whatever we end up doing.

"Whatever that may be."

Ann Chapman's husband runs the daily operations. Her sister owns the store. Donna Jones of Weeki Wachee has owned the Christmas House only a year, but now she's in the hospital, and that explained the sign on the front door, which was true at least in part: "Rogers' Christmas House will be closed for 2 weeks due to illness."

But Wednesday's unexpected developments were about more than that.

"Christmas was excellent - just not enough," Chapman said of the annual seasonal boost in sales. "Not enough to take care of everything we need to take care of."

"I think this is horrible, horrible, horrible for Brooksville," said Monique Swann, the vice president of the Brooksville Business Alliance and the owner of the Creative Porch & Garden boutique - which actually is scheduled to close next month.

"I'm afraid for all of us," she said.

"This would be a big loss to the central core of the city," Brooksville redevelopment director Brian Brijbag said.

The Christmas House, after all, is not just any local business. People from all over the state - even the country - know about Brooksville and come to Brooksville because of it.

City clerk Karen Phillips calls it the city's "jewel." Local historian Bob Martinez calls it one of Hernando's "most alluring tourist destinations."

Sally Petrie has Sally Ann's consignment store on U.S. 98 and is the president of the business alliance. She lived in Key West before moving here and says she knew about Brooksville because of the Christmas House.

"I'm absolutely sick over this," she said Wednesday.

All of this was started by founder and longtime owner Margaret "Weenie" Rogers Ghiotto. She began in 1970 selling Christmas collectibles out of a corner of her father's downtown department store and two years later moved the business to its current location on S Saxon Avenue. Ghiotto died in February at 89.

Jones, the new owner, bought the Christmas House a year ago, and the Chapmans moved from Michigan to help her.

They had a Greater Hernando County Chamber of Commerce ribbon cutting in May.

Their first six months were slow. But the summer is always slow. And they repainted, relined the parking lot, replaced the older, more worn-out decks and walkways on the grounds and added 14 kinds of trees to the already considerable inventory.

Then came the Christmas whirlwind.

Then the reality of January.

The place has 31 employees. The electric bill is $3,100 a month, Chapman said. There are 12 Christmas House billboards, from the Georgia line to Daytona to U.S. 19, and they don't come cheap.

On Wednesday afternoon, the main door was locked, and the many tall frosted-white Christmas trees in the foyer could be seen through the windows on the front porch. The lights were off.

Ann Chapman was upstairs.

"We'll figure out what's going on in the next two weeks," she said. "I'm sure something will work out. I'm an optimist."

But in the meantime, she said, she bought a lottery ticket Tuesday night at the Hess station on the way home.

Just in case.

Michael Kruse can be reached at mkruse@sptimes.com or 352 848-1434.

[Last modified January 10, 2007, 20:38:54]