Trying Times for Thrift Store

Sandwiched between the steel and concrete walls of MIT’s expanding campus and the late-Victorian homes and Haitian barbershops of working-class east Cambridge, the Garment District caters both to college and blue-collar shoppers—or anyone searching for clothes at rock-bottom prices.

But the demands of the city’s climbing real estate market are pressuring the “alternative department store” to change the way it does business and could lead to its historic building’s renovation or razing and replacement with condominiums, pending an agreement with building co-owner and real estate developer Tani Halperin.

As manager, co-owner, and president of The Garment District, Inc., Christopher Cassell admits that the building, parts of which date back to 1891, is in dire need of rehabilitation.

Tiles, some painted a garish pink, loosely hang on the outside of the building. The floors are worn, the building’s structural integrity generally sound but not perfect.

Renovations will cost money—potentially a lot of it—leaving owners with a predicament: what should one do with a historic but increasingly ramshackle building situated on real estate that is in high demand?

“Condos drive the real estate market,” Cassell says. “The building does need work. How do you get that work? Condo-ization would help pay for rehab.”

Downstairs, a handful of shoppers rummage through clothes piled a foot deep across a wide expanse of floor space at Dollar a Pound+. (In fact, merchandise is currently priced at $1.50 per pound.) A shoe section offers used wingtips and new knee-high boots and stack-heeled monstrosities. Upstairs, clothing is more or less organized into racks of new, used, and vintage ’60s and ’70s duds.

The Garment District is 14 years old, the complement to the Dollar A Pound business that began when the building still housed an industrial rag manufacturer.

The 200 Broadway St. property was assessed in 2005 at a total value of $1,901,500—of which the 14,896-square-foot lot accounted for nearly all, at $1,836,200. The City of Cambridge lists the property as having a living space of 35,502 square feet, of which Cassell says about 5,000 is unusable.

Cassell and Halperin are developing plans to renovate or replace the building, and Cassell said the tentative plan is for condos upstairs with retail space on the first floor.

Cassell and Halperin bought the property for $3.4 million on May 5. The business is co-owned by Cassell and partner Brooke Fletcher.

The Garment District occupies a little cyberspace as well, peddling its wares online at www.garmentdistrict.com. The site consolidates the store’s status as a destination for vintage shopping—when asked what brought her to the garment district, shopper Sam L. Steves, 16, of Byfield, Mass. responded, “the internet,” pausing before adding “and cheap clothes.”

The Garment District’s extensive clothing-sorting and processing operations, which occupy nearly half of the building’s floor space, could be relocated off-site. Unusuable items are recycled, while unwanted but functional clothing is bundled and sent to the Third World.

But fiddling with processing operations won’t solve the Garment District’s dilemma, because space is not the greatest obstacle to conversion to condos.

The existing structure is not sufficiently set back from the road and, importantly, it can offer no parking. Halperin told The Boston Globe that the current building could not be converted into housing. Building subterranean parking, Cassell says, would complicate aspirations to renovate but preserve the historic building.

A self-described “rag man,” Cassell wants to “rehab” the building and keep Garment District retail operations at 200 Broadway St.

Cassell intends to keep these operations running during renovation, which could begin as soon as next spring, provided he reaches an agreement with Halperin and secures the requisite permits. The Garment District could move, during the overhaul, to a temporary location.

The loss of the Garment District would be a loss to East Cambridge as well, Cassell says, in that it offers both jobs and inexpensive clothes. The store employs 30 workers full-time.

The store manager, Liz M. Donovan, has been there for eight years, and isn’t eager for the business to change.

“I think that people are making a courageous effort [to keep it as is],” Donovan says. “I think the building’s beautiful. I’m not for making it into condos.”

The allure of the Garment District lies in both the clothes and whatever distinguishes it from an upscale boutique or an inexpensive outlet.

“We aren’t Walmart,” Cassell says. “We’re a local organization.”

This is reflected in the store’s clerk-client relationship, in which a surly, Boston-tinged hipster indifference might mask latent friendliness.

“I think it has the best aspects of Cambridge in that it’s a different kind of place,” Donovan says. “It has the Cambridge attitude of people working hard, treating each other well, and offering something at a reasonable price for everyone.”

Some say the customers make the difference.

“There’s a very wide variety of people we get. Kirsten Dunst came in last month,” Cassell says, counting movie-studio traffic, teenage bargain-hunters, and Caribbean immigrants among his clientele. “There’s a huge mix, and that’s what I like about it. You never know who’s going to come in.”

They’re drawn by value and, the staff thinks, by atmosphere.

“We try to keep it casual enough that people can come in and be themselves and be comfortable,” Donovan says. “People appreciate having a break from the everyday.”

Most of all, for this warehouse full of kitschy cardigans and designer pinstripe blazers priced as-is, it’s the clothes.

Emily J. Wallick, 15, came into Boston from Hamilton, Mass., with four friends specifically to shop at the Garment District.

“There’s a lot of oldies stuff. It’s all so colorful and happy,” she says. “The last times [I came here] I bought sunglasses, then studs, and now I’m buying a skirt,” she says, holding up a flowing, brown wisp of fabric. “Random things. I like everything here.”

—Staff writer Samuel C. Scott can be reached at sscott@fas.harvard.edu.