UWS' Beacon Hardware Taken Over By Another Local Store: Report

UPPER WEST SIDE, MANHATTAN — Beacon Paint & Hardware's Amsterdam Avenue storefront seems to have found new permanent owners after changing hands twice since it closed last month, according to reports.

The hardware store space, which had been open as Beacon for 120 years, was taken over this week by another local shop, Gartner's Hardware on West 72nd Street, the West Side Rag reports.

Gartner's take over of the Amsterdam Avenue and West 78th Street storefront comes after another group of hardware store owners briefly ran the store before deciding to sell it.

Brothers Segundo and Orlando More, who own two other stores, took over Beacon last week and planned to keep it as a hardware store. But, they ultimately told the West Side Rag they they "didn't have the resources to carry it forward" and decided to pass the space to Gartner.

Beacon had been struggling for months to stay open and announced it would close in February, nearly a year after friends of the business first started a GoFundMe to help the struggling store.

A friend of Beacon Paint & Hardware's owners originally created the GoFundMe campaign last April with a goal to raise $100,000 for the store, which at the time was worried competition from online and big-box retailers combined with rising costs may eventually force it to shutter, owners told Patch.

The Stark family, who owned Beacon since 1971, went on to join other local stores. Bruce Stark and Steven Stark both went to work at Janovic Paints, which has a store on West 72nd Street.

To read the full West Side Rag report on the acquisition click here.

Correction: An earlier version of this article stated that Bruce was a manager at Janovic and that his sister, Ellen, also worked there based on information from the Beacon Facebook page. This has been updated to reflect that Bruce works at Janovic but is not a manager and Ellen does not work there.