Dougherty is nearing the end of what locals call “Jekyll’s Famous Shop.” Dougherty’s ice cream, candy and fudge shop, like many of his neighbors in the Pier Road Historic District, will close on Labor Day. The seven stores’ leases expire Sept. 7. State park officials are planning an overhaul of the shopping district in the coming months in what they say is an effort to improve the visitor experience.
Credit: Jekyll Island Conservancy
Credit: Jekyll Island Conservancy
Six existing stores will close, with only the gift shop Remember When remaining. The retail space will be a mix of authority-managed stores and stores operated by independent retailers. The Jekyll Island Authority’s board of directors accepted lease bids from two businesses at its meeting Tuesday, with a third expected to be awarded at its September meeting.
The revamped shopping center, known as The District Shops, is expected to be fully open by next spring, but a spokesman for the authority said some stores are expected to open by the end of the year. Renovations are due to begin in September.
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The Labor Day closures mark what Juliana Germano, owner of the two Pier Road stores, calls “the end of an era.” Most of the stores closed after the Great Depression after operating for decades in quaint wooden buildings that were servants’ cabins in the heyday of the Jekyll Island Club, a winter home for industrial tycoons such as Rockefeller, Pulitzer and Morgan.
The closing of the stores also brings to an end a years-long battle that has caused resentment between the Jekyll Island Board of Management and local business owners and residents. For many years, the Pier Road store owners had been operating under three-year leases that had been renewed in the past, but the Board of Management notified them last September that the leases would expire in 90 days and the store spaces would be repurposed or put up for bid.
The notice sparked an outcry, leading officials to extend existing leases by nine months while the shopping district was conceived and bids solicited and collected. Jekyll Island officials approved the “District Shops” plan in January and solicited bids earlier this summer from three specific vendors: a coffee shop, an ice cream and candy store and a grab-and-go food market.
Credit: Adam Van Brimer
Credit: Adam Van Brimer
Other retail spaces will include a portrait studio, a year-round Christmas market and a Georgia-made food store, all operated by the Jekyll Island Authority.
Dougherty was the only current store owner to speak at Tuesday’s board meeting; Germano, who owns The Commissary Market and The Island House art, fashion and gift shops, had submitted written public comments in advance.
Reached by phone after the authority’s board meeting, Germano expressed disappointment in the process that will close the store. He noted that The Commissary operates as a retailer of Georgia-made products, selling private-label jams, jellies and sauces, but the authority plans to operate its own stores with the same concept. Germano was not asked if he would be interested in operating the planned “Made in Georgia” stores, and no bids were solicited for the stores.
“I didn’t want to be in the ice cream or coffee house business,” said Germano, who opened his first retail store on Jekyll Island in 1995. “If they had talked to me about a ‘Made in Georgia’ store beforehand, I might have considered it, but now I don’t want to go into business with them.”
Credit: Adam Van Brimer
Credit: Adam Van Brimer
Dougherty, of Island Sweet Shop, had the opportunity to bid on the ice cream and candy retail space but didn’t like the terms. He currently pays $9 per square foot per month in rent for a 400-foot space, but the new store is planned for a larger space at $16 per square foot. The proposed lease also requires the tenant to pay 4 percent of annual gross revenue to the Jekyll Island Board of Management.
“To me, this is a labor of love,” he says, “but it still sounded like a bad deal to me.”
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Dougherty expressed optimism about a new ice cream and candy outlet, St. Simons Sweets, a family-run fudge shop in Pier Village on the neighboring island that Dougherty knows well.
The other lease bid approved Tuesday was for a coffee house, which also included Golden Isles favorite, family-owned Wake Up Coffee Co. The St. Simons Island-based company operates three retail stores in the Brunswick area. Wake Up was the only bidder to operate a coffee shop.