🔒Functional family: Topsham Fair Mall is a who’s who of Maine-owned businesses, including a new member

John Larson will be the first to say that Topsham Fair Mall doesn’t fit the mold of successful shopping center.

The 200,000-square-foot mall, including two anchors, is a lot more space than what traditional centers have. The ownership is split between his family and two other entities. Most notable to shoppers, there’s barely a national brand to be found among its two dozen businesses.

“We’re not typical,” Larson says. “We just do things the way we do them.”

And it works. The shopping center has signed five leases this year, almost all of them successful Maine-owned businesses. They join nearly 20 Maine-owned businesses, anchored by Scarborough-based Hannaford supermarket at one end and Damariscotta-based Renys department store at the other.

Sherman’s Maine Coast Book Shops in April announced Topsham Fair Mall is one of three sites in its expansion this summer. Music Center Inc. is moving to the center from Tontine Mall in Brunswick. Cannabis shop Highbrow is expanding into the building recently occupied by Ruby Tuesday. A new business, aquarium supply store Corals Unlimited, is taking Highbrow’s unit.

And Larson’s company, Four Js LLC, is building a standalone 1,996-square-foot building that will be occupied by Jersey Mike’s Subs.

Larson and his wife June bought the shopping center, excluding the Hannaford space, in 2003. Right away, they identified a strategy that ran counter to malls that load up on chain stores that, the conventional thinking goes, can justify higher rents.

“We decided we wanted to provide a home for local businesses,” he says, pausing. “That may seem stupid, business-wise. We may be short-changing ourselves.”

That hasn’t made them change their minds, though, and the strategy, has resulted in a unique grouping of businesses that carries its own Maine brand. Sherman’s, which plans to open by the end of the summer, will join a who’s who of Maine family-owned businesses that includes Day’s Jewelers, shoe retailer Lamey Wellehan and Renys.

Larson, June and their son, Jeffrey, now own the middle 65,000 square feet as well as pad space. Business partners Kevin and Paul Kelly in 2018 bought the “Renys end,” which also includes Lamey Wellehan, the 6,000-square-foot Sherman’s space and Smitty’s Cinema.

While the ownership is split in three, Larson sees the mall as a family.

“It’s all connected,” physically and in spirit, he says.

Sherman’s joins the family

Sherman’s owners Jeff Curtis and Maria Boord had Topsham in mind when they decided to open a new store this past winter. The plan grew to three stores, which will bring the chain to eight. But expansion plans started with Topsham.

Curtis had his eye on the shopping center ever since he made an unsuccessful bid for the former Bookland at Cooks Corner in Brunswick years before. It became clear as years went on that the Topsham site was just as inviting, he says.

Larson, meanwhile, wrote Sherman’s a letter, something he does when he thinks a Maine business will be a good fit.

The letter was a few years ago, and Sherman’s new landlord is the Kelly brothers, but Larson delights in the fact Sherman’s is now part of the family.

“It’s something we’ve wanted for a long time,” he says.

Curtis likes the Topsham site for a few reasons. “The first thing is, we like the size,” he says. “And second, we’re right beside Renys and Lamey Wellehan, it’s great. The traditional Maine end of the mall.”

An extended family

Farther up the strip, Day’s Jewelers does business in between Kim’s Hallmark and the Fairgrounds Café.

“Any time we can be associated with Maine-owned businesses, it’s good for us,” says Joe Corey, president of Day’s. He says that family-owned Day’s has an emphasis on relationships. “Our staff is like a family in itself,” he says, and that, in turn, extends to customers.

The theme carries to the extended family at Topsham Fair Mall, “an exciting place to be.”

Day’s has been at the mall for six years. Larson, Corey says, “does a great job keeping all the units occupied,” as well as promoting businesses, both internally and outside.

Larson says customers don’t distinguish between who owns the space. “We try to market the mall and the entire area as a single entity,” he says. “That’s how customers see us, and we all benefit from each others’ success.”

He wasn’t so sure about the place when he and June bought it in 2003. He’d been working for a Connecticut-based developer that scouted retail sites and was familiar with the area.

When the mall was first built, in 1986, he thought it was an awful location. But when the Coastal Connector was built in the late 1990s for a straight shot to the coast that bypassed downtown Brunswick and Topsham, that changed. The connector, which starts next to the mall at Exit 31A on Interstate 295, now has average daily traffic of 54,000 vehicles, according to Maine Department of Transportation.

When he and June bought the mall 18 years ago, it was 30% empty, doomed by the huge vacancy left when anchor Bradlees department store shut down in 2001 when the chain went bankrupt.

“To my wife, the dirtiest four-letter word in the English language is ‘debt,’” Larson says. They doubled-down on making the mall work, with Village Candle moving into the Bradlees space, using it for both manufacturing and retail. The other spaces began to fill up.

When Village Candle left, Renys moved in.

Keeping it local

Businesses, both national and local come and go. RadioShack, Ruby Tuesday and a stream of local retailers have said hello, then good-bye. But the center rarely has a vacancy for long.

Larson says that one reason he likes local businesses is that he can pick up the phone, or walk over, and talk to someone if there’s a roof leak or some other issue. With national companies, communication is with a corporate office somewhere far away, and is much more complicated.

Tenants say that goes both ways.

Fairgrounds Café owner Perry Leavitt says that the Larsons’ hands-on presence is what makes the shopping center hum. The café is an original tenant, and Leavitt doubled his space five years ago.

“He cares about the tenants,” Leavitt says. “He works with us, and it makes all the difference.”

That was never so important, Leavitt says, as when the pandemic hit.

“Without John working with people like he did, we never would’ve made it,” Leavitt says. “It’s how we survived.”

Larson says allowing businesses time to adjust was the obvious choice. “They can’t pay the rent if they can’t be open,” he says. “It wasn’t their fault.”

He adds, “We all suffer together.”

The shopping center lost two tenants during the pandemic, and one was national chain Ruby Tuesday, which was part of a corporate bankruptcy.

A keen feel for how different tenants operate helps as well.

Sunset Farms owner Roy Wallace takes care of property maintenance, and his family farm also sells flowers and ice cream at separate stands in the parking lot.

As the plan formulated to build space that will be occupied by Jersey Mike’s Subs in an area of the parking lot occupied seasonally by Sunset Gardens, Larson says he made sure the farm would not be negatively affected.

“They’re a great family business to work with,” Larson says.

When Highbrow sought to expand to the now-vacant 6,155-square-foot Ruby Tuesday building, Larson was surprised, since it’s restaurant space, but was on board when the company said that’s what was needed for expanded edibles production.

Jo-Ann Stores, owner of JOANN Fabrics, has also thrived, expanding from 8,000 square feet to 18,000 over the decade-plus it’s been there.

The Larsons occupy a closet-sized office next to Renys. It’s kind of like a ground-level air traffic control booth, with Jeffrey manning several computers and the phone in front of windows that look out over the parking lot.

They don’t need a lot of space. “We’re not a store,” Larson says. “We don’t sell anything.” He gestures out the window. “This is what we do.”