Bay Creek Shops Foreclosed, Shutting Down; Aqua Remains
“End of Season Sale” reads the flier in The Shops at Bay Creek. But it’s also the end of the line — the Shops are closing permanently next Saturday. (Wave photo)
By DORIE SOUTHERN
Cape Charles Wave
October 14, 2012
The Shops at Bay Creek, comprising four stores in the building located between Bay Creek Marina and Aqua Restaurant, are closing at the end of this week, victims of a bank foreclosure.
The Shops, Aqua, and the Marina are three separate business entities, and only the Shops are being foreclosed.
The Shops include:
— Bahama Breeze clothing store for men and women;
— Veranda arts and novelties;
— Purple Pelican gifts and wine; and
— Seaside Gallery, featuring paintings and prints by local artist Thelma Peterson.
The Shops will be open through Saturday, October 20. Employees who spoke to the Wave said they had no idea when or if any of the businesses might reopen under new management.
Most merchandise is on sale at 75 percent off.
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Meanwhile, at Aqua Restaurant it’s business as usual. Aqua is open every day until November 1, when the off-season schedule begins. Thereafter, Aqua will be closed Sundays and Mondays, and offer its popular two-for-one specials on Tuesdays.
The third commercial entity in Marina Village is the marina itself. According to reports, the marina was recently divested by Bay Creek Resort and Club. The new owner is not known.
The marina also operates The Complete Angler marine store, which will remain open.
Bahama Breeze, Veranda, Seaside Gallery, and Purple Pelican are closing. Aqua Restaurant and The Complete Angler marine shop will remain open. (Wave photo)
I don’t believe Thelma Peterson is personally involved in the reported foreclosure.
I would imagine, as Ms. Peterson is probably leasing, that she is closing the gallery due to the loss of the space.
Depressing. We should have tried harder to support them. We need to remember to shop local if we want local businesses to stay around. Make sure you get your wine and holiday gifts on Mason and stock up on olive oil on Strawberry; otherwise you are stuck with Food Lion and their nondescript offerings.
The Bay Creek shops opened in the glow of heady optimism of the real estate boom that birthed Bay Creek. I asked the question back then why Dickie Foster didn’t finish one thing (golf community) before he started another (marina), and people looked at me as if I had two heads. And that was before he bought a railroad and commissioned a carousel. I am sorry that the shops are closing. I have patronized them in the past, but they are off the beaten track and there are not enough residents of Marina Village to keep shops open. Let us hope that those who choose to invest in Cape Charles and its surroundings going forward do so in a measured and realistic manner. The unrealistic real estate market of the early 2000s and its reliance on “flipping” properties to make more and more inflated profits is gone and never to be seen again.
Loss of the shops is a blow to what the developer attempted to do with the shops. However, for the average “Joe” (includes the feminine “Jo”), the shops served more like a museum of modern day artifacts priced for a market that simply does not exist in Cape Charles. Joe couldn’t buy a suit or tie there; Jo couldn’t find dresses or undergarments. It doesn’t take a marketing degree to figure that an enterprise that caters to a very narrowly drawn audience will not survive. The surprise is that it lasted as long as it did.
The sad thing is that the shops are very attractive, but will now be more empty space in Town. The hope is that the owners will find a way to broaden the shops’ appeal so they can survive.
Looks like Kmart is a viable candidate for that space.
On a different note, the new library (The Bank) could pick up Bay Creek Shops’ market. One possibility is to have seating by the windows, upstairs and downstairs, alternating iPad stations with seats with power outlets for visitors’ own laptops. The downstairs area could house smallish boutiques (sea glass hut, Tommy Bahama scarf outlet…) and food retailers selling entremets/noshes (Brown Dog ice cream, Coffee Shop latte, Gull Hummock wine…) – think Delta’s LaGuardia Terminal D. At the library, former Bay Creek Shops’ customers could spend the hot summer working on spreadsheets, leafing through gardening books or the fall issue of Vogue, or recovering from a figurative heat stroke with Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil, people watching, and, most importantly, shopping. Consumption – even consumerism – is possible anywhere, even at the library, for the benefit of all.