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Stout's Shoes plans to downsize its flagship Mass Ave location, which it touts as the nation's oldest shoe store, to make way for a new restaurant and bar along the popular dining corridor.
The family-owned shoe store at 318 Massachusetts Ave., which has operated in the building since 1886, will cut its ground-floor space by about 80 percent, keeping 1,000 square feet for a showroom and most of the now-empty basement for shoe inventory, said company president Brad Stout.
A restaurant has agreed to take 4,500 square feet on the first floor, along with a mezzanine level and part of the basement. Stout on Monday declined to name the restaurateur since a lease deal was not final, but he said the operator is local.
"We have some very expensive retail property up there, and we're using it as a warehouse," said Stout, who plans to reuse some of the store's vintage features including original chairs, ladders and part of an iconic Baldwin Flyer chain-and-basket delivery system in the revamped, smaller space.
The store's talkative mascot, a macaw named Ripley, won't be going anywhere, either. The shop also will keep its Delaware Street entrance and at least a few dedicated parking spaces, while adding a new entrance on Mass Ave.
It won't be Brad Stout's first go-round as a landlord. He rents space on either side of the shop to the hip Mexican restaurant Bakersfield, and Full Circle Hair Salon. That block of Mass Ave is a "sweet spot" for restaurants, he said.
The restaurant concept likely will make reference to the building's history as a shoe store, but Stout won't allow the new users to repurpose the chain-and-basket system. "Too much history," he said.
The smaller Stout's store will carry the same shoe brands and styles but will feel more intimate and less cavernous, Stout said.
"It will be a store the young people of Mass Ave can come into and understand," he said.
But there are no plans to remove the signs that play up the shop's long history, even though they tend to draw more nostalgic visitors than paying customers.
The work to divide the space is scheduled to commence in the next few months. The shop will remain open during the transition.
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