Throughout September, Subway has marked the anniversary of its 1965 launch in Bridgeport by Fred DeLuca, as the massive chain nears the half-century mark in business.
In a roundabout way in Stamford, DeLuca can also take a little credit for the creation of a few city blocks of businesses focusing on items a century old or more.
Antique and Artisan Center founders Mark Candido and Ron Scinto recently opened a first New York City store, 16 years after launching in Stamford”™s South End and after an aborted attempt to open a hybrid coffee shop and antiques showroom in a West Haven strip mall. The strip mall was owned at the time by DeLuca ”“ who, a real estate broker said, turned them down due to the possibility of opening his own coffeehouse concept alongside a Subway there.
Neither Candido nor Scinto took the coffee thing very far (nor DeLuca for that matter), but in the course of their real estate search discovered an opportunity for a large antiques center in Stamford to house multiple dealers ”“ in the heart of lower Fairfield County, one of the wealthiest enclaves in the country.
Landing a former dressbarn warehouse at $3 per square foot, after six months of renovations the center opened and has never had a vacancy, and 16 years later has maintained a waiting list even as five other centers have mushroomed around it.
“We would put on a jacket and a tie and we would go around to these (antique) shows every week and we would see the same (dealers) over and over again,” Candido said. “And they”™re like, ”˜oh yeah, there are those guys that are going to open that center in Stamford.”™ So we got this sort of buzz going.”
Stamford”™s antiques cluster has big buzz today with at least 700 dealers, the biggest concentration within a couple of city blocks in the country, Candido thinks. Besides The Antique and Artisan Center, others include the Connecticut Antiques Center, Hamptons Antique Galleries, Harbor View Center for Antiques, Hiden Galleries and John Street Antiques Center. And Greenwich Living Antiques has another 60-plus dealers in Greenwich.
After spinning out The Accessory Store next door to The Antique and Artisan Center to sell hard-to-find room fixtures, Scinto has now opened a Manhattan outlet dubbed Illumé and focused on lampshades. In Stamford, meanwhile, Candido and Scinto have brought in a new partner in Mari Ann Maher, who learned the trade in a family business called John Rosselli Antiques and Decorations in New York City.
A fragmented industry, there may be no better proxy for the U.S. antique and art market than the performance of auction house Sotheby”™s. With the second quarter of 2011 the best in Sotheby”™s 265-year history, this year”™s second quarter sales were down 18 percent to $304 million.
In a market whose supply is driven by “death, divorce and debt” in the words of one analyst, Sotheby”™s CEO Bill Ruprecht said in August that the near future could provide significant opportunities for buyers.
“I never entirely understand the full range of motivation of the seller ”“ in other words, people don”™t come to me and say, ”˜I”™m out of cash; I would like to do x, y and z,”™” Ruprecht said. “They simply say, “I”™d like to sell this.”™ Because of the number of inquiries that we”™ve had about selling significant groups of property, I posit as a guess ”“ not as a fact ”“ that there is significant need for liquidity across not (an) insignificant number of collectors, who may not have the number of avenues that they have historically to access significant liquidity.”
