Hanging Up the Tool Belt
After more than eight decades at Main Street and El Camino Real, Tustin Hardware has become known as a community meeting place, a shop where customers can catch up on the latest gossip while stocking up on supplies.
In years past, regulars would swap stories and rumors while standing around a wood-burning stove in the back. Even today the shop retains the feeling of a close-knit community as its fifth owner, Dave Vandaveer Jr., greets nearly everyone by name who passes through the doors.
“Over the decades there’s been all sorts of gossip,” Vandaveer said. “There’s always something going on in Old Town Tustin that gets people talking.”
So patrons of one of the oldest businesses in Old Town Tustin know they will lose more than nails and bolts when the venerable shop closes.
After five years of declining revenue, Vandaveer, 33, says he cannot compete with what he calls the “big boxes” of the hardware world--warehouse-style stores such as Home Depot and Home Base.
He’s marked down all his merchandise to 60% off. And when it goes, he said, so will Tustin Hardware.
“The big companies are swallowing up the little guys,” he said.
Loyal customers said they will miss the special service that Tustin Hardware offers.
Vandaveer, who holds a degree in electrical engineering and is an expert on household repairs, once talked a customer through a sink installation over the phone and even paid a house call to someone who was having problems putting in a new door. On a more typical day, he is busy answering questions ranging from the simple to the arcane.
“You can come here with the craziest questions and get help,” said Tustin resident Pete Vandyken, 58, who has shopped at the store for about 30 years. “You get actual service here. At these other companies, you’re just a number.”
Tustin Hardware offers something else the big stores cannot: a sense of history. It was, for example, the site of a dramatic daytime shootout in 1952, when an employee of the former bank next door pursued a would-be robber. As the story goes, the employee (a former WWII Marine) crouched behind a washing machine for sale in front of the hardware store and shot the fleeing bandit.
“I’ve heard that story from several people who were there, so I can be pretty sure it’s true,” Vandaveer said.
The subject of Tustin Hardware’s closure has come up during several City Council meetings, as residents, merchants and city officials struggle with ideas on how to attract businesses to Old Town and help struggling stores.
Old Town Tustin, with its eclectic mix of shops and architecture dating back to the 1880s, is considered the historic and symbolic heart of the city.
The Downtown Business Assn. was recently formed to better market the area to prospective merchants, but Vandaveer said he believes those efforts have fallen short. The association “is a great idea,” he said, “but I really don’t see it working right now ,They need to get a big anchor store in here, because as it is now, [Old Town] is just twirling downward.”
Vandaveer, who owns the Tustin Hardware building, said he is searching for a new tenant.
He’s had offers, he said, but turned them down because he thought they would not be successful. Most of his six employees have found other work but Vandaveer said he isn’t sure what he will do next.
“People have said, ‘Why don’t you go work for Home Depot?” he said. “But I just can’t do that.”
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NEIGHBORHOODS: Old Town Tustin
Bounded by: Santa Ana and Costa Mesa freeways, Newport and Prospect avenues
Businesses in Old Town: Approximately 150
Hot topic: A decline in business, seen in the pending closure of one of the area’s oldest and most beloved shops, Tustin Hardware
