In It For The Spirit(s)

Some might argue that Mitch Ancona deserves to open the first package store in Wilton; at the very least, he's certainly paid his dues in more ways than one.

Ancona first heard about the push for allowing liquor sales in Wilton around the time of the last presidential election in 2008. At that point, a petition was circulating in town to get the issue on the ballot and in front of voters.

"When the whole concept of the petition being out there came about, that's when I had to start thinking about how this was going to affect me, my livelihood, and my business here," Ancona said during an interview last week at his busy Ridgefield store, the phone ringing off the hook nearby. "So then I started looking at the concept of opening up a second store in Wilton...because I figured if it was voted on favorably, I was going to lose business, since I draw a fair amount of business from Wilton."

As the petition and the idea gained steam, Ancona decided to get out ahead of the movement by looking into viable locations for a new store. He happened upon the departing Cold Stone Creamery storefront in the Wilton Shopping Center (next to Super Stop&Shop) and decided it was right for him, beating out a few other prospective tenants and signing the lease in August of 2008. And then things got interesting.

"Maybe two weeks after I signed the lease, bold in the paper on Thursday, I see: 'Booze Vote Put Off for a Year,' or something like that," Ancona said with a wry smile and a chuckle. "And I was just like, 'I'm paying rent! You can't do that!'"

With no inclination of the scrapped vote ahead, Ancona had committed to renting a commercial space that all of a sudden he could not utilize. The town, it seemed, had discovered it was the state charter that dictated when and how a petition could and should be drafted. The current petition, then, was for naught and, for many, this was the end of it.

For Ancona, it was the beginning.

"At that point I guess I could have tried to point fingers," Ancona admitted. "But I wasn't going to go back on my word to the landlord because that's not how I do things...it would have been like crying over spilled milk."

Instead, Ancona met with Wilton officials and eventually started "Wilton for Wine," a group intent on gauging and gaining the necessary support to get the liquor ordinance back on the following year's ballot. Ancona admitted that his motive, initially, was simply to follow through on his desire of opening a second store in Wilton.

"But at some point," he said, "it stopped being about me opening a second store and it was all about getting the question in front of the voters of Wilton, that was our objective. I wouldn't say it was easy, but we did it with a pretty solid buffer of over ten percent more signatures than we needed...and during that whole period of time, my mantra was: 'I don't really care how you feel about it, just vote.' I wanted everybody to vote, I wanted a really solid snapshot of what the town wanted."

And when the Nov. 2009 elections finally came around, he got it. In one of the larger municipal elections in the town's history (with almost 40 percent voter turnout), residents easily passed the liquor ordinance 2363 to 1801.

This was no small victory, either. Not only did it mean Ancona could proceed with his plans of opening a second store (and hopefully stop paying out of pocket for rent, as he has been for the past year), but it validated his hard work in giving the town of Wilton something its residents clearly wanted.

Now, Ancona is focused on clearing the last few legal hurdles and getting his store renovated and ready to open. He went before the Planning and Zoning Committee last night (Jan. 25) and the public hearing on his desire to finalize plans for the 2,153 square-foot space at 5 River Road went smoothly. Some committee members expressed aesthetic concerns, asking him about the potential for can and bottle returns piling up and also for gaudy sale signage to be displayed. Ancona responded that he only expects about 12 percent of his business to be in beer sales, which will diminish returns, and he will also have a special area in the back of the store to house cans and bottles before they are picked up by distributors roughly twice a week. And as for the signage?

"I own my building where my store is now and I don't think I've really ever had signs like that, not at least since the 1980s," Ancona told the committee. "They are tacky and they don't reflect the kind of business I want to do."

Ancona's case has already been assigned to an agent and once that person hears from the town that they have approved it, they can begin finalizing things on the state level. Ancona foresees the process taking, "at least six to eight weeks, plus the amount of work I need to do in the space," and believes he can open sometime in the middle of March.

At that pace, he would likely be either the first or second store to open in town. The Planning and Zoning Committee held one other hearing for a proposed store at 203 Danbury Road on Monday night, as well, and mentioned another application having been filed for a store in the Georgetown area. Unlike Ancona's, however, the Danbury Road hearing was continued to Planning and Zoning's next meeting and the Georgetown application likely won't be heard for another few weeks at the earliest.

In all likelihood, then, it seems Ancona will further entrench himself in Wilton's history by being the first to open a package store in town. And it seems fitting. Not only did he fight hard to bring the issue to voters and see them overwhelmingly approve it, but he is also something of a honorary Wiltonian, himself. True, he didn't grow up here. But, as he says, he did grow up "within a few miles" of his store on the Wilton/Ridgefield border at all times and "probably went to more Wilton proms than Ridgefield proms" during his youth.

So how does he feel about being the booze trailblazer?

"I guess a certain part of me would like to be the first one, that'd be nice," he said modestly. "But that's not my objective. My objective is to open a store that reflects the kind of store that I run now; looks, and feel, and a product and a store that I think the town wants. So, I'm not going to rush it just to plant the flag first. I'll be more than happy to be second, third, fourth, and open the store that I feel good about opening."

Cheers to that.