Liz Kirchner
‘Boogie Fever’ is bouncing out of the wide open doors of Charlotte’s Web II past a spangles-and-lamé miniskirt display festooned with pink flamingos and tapestry parasols. Grooving down the steps over pots of purple and orange petunias, the happy vibe spills into the roomy parking lot behind the vast brick warehouse that, until January, housed the Emporium antiques co-op.
The new owners of Charlotte’s Web II, Dave Franklin and Nancy Lough of Charlotte’s Web Antique Mall in Salem bought the place this winter, then spent three days in a flurry of white paint and Windex to open.
“In that three days all the walls and floors were cleaned, painted and 34 new dealers moved into the 9,000-plus square foot building,” Lough said.
The two hope to bring their successful business model from their Charlotte’s Web I in Salem to the Cambria district and envision pioneering into the district’s future development.
“We chose Cambria for its quaint history, but also its potential with a brewery rumored for behind our building and an Amtrak station up the tracks from us,” she said.
Now, turquoise and tangerine flags are flapping on the roof and breezy palm-treed Margaritaville neon is glowing in the windows of the enormous century-old space, that they’ve made manageable by breaking into pools of vendor displays.
Reimagining the whole experience of the antiques warehouse from a dim and surreal jumble of Louis XIV settees, sequin mini-skirts, cast-iron frying pans, Hardy Boy mysteries box sets and Buddha-head lamps, they’ve made a complete and obvious re-orientation, one that moves the shop entrance away from the fender-bender sliver of parking wedged into the tangle of traffic and railroad track in the front of the building, and swinging it to the roomy gravel lot in back.
Visitors now enter by sweeping up wide steps, and are greeted by color and story in the entrance display. All whimsy and smarts, it’s hardly a surprise that Franklin and Lough each have art degrees from Radford University and Roanoke College. The doors are wide enough to haul bedsteads and armoires and Buddha heads to a car.
“I would say our reorienting the checkout station and entrance to the back of the building is the biggest, best change,” Lough said.
She’s got decades retailing vintage merchandise and antiques and he’s a builder who can creats one of a kind vendor booth fronts and the clever check-out station. This one built to mimic a train station.
Lough and Franklin might describe their style as “trendy” and “fun“ in the three-story 1908 brick warehouse. It’s got the oldest freight elevator in Virginia and a ghost.
“We see it as a “destination location” that offers a customer lounge, oldies music, coffee, tea, TV and friendly a atmosphere,” said Lough in an email. “And as a business, our goal is to attract the widest audience to marvel at and want to own the up-cycled, high quality belongings of our parents and grandparents at an affordable price.”
“I love this place. It’s full of treasures,” says one shopper who’s 24 and has just unearthed a coffee-table book about Rasputin.
Lough says the mid-century modern decor, solid wood furniture, vinyl LP’s and collectibles attract young people and families.
The Archies are singing “Sugar Sugar” and a train is going by, its graffiti is banging and clanking past, like a movie in the tall windows headed for exciting destinations.
