Fairground Hardware Owner Laments Des Moines Store's Closing

DES MOINES, IA — Mike Robinson gets a little emotional when he thinks about next week. He pauses, stares out the broad front window of Fairground Hardware, covered with signs proclaiming 50% off of everything he has left. And he thinks about the people.

It's the friends, the faithful customers — the ones who needed a screen repaired, the ones who brought in tiny screws and aerators and cracked couplings packed in plastic bags so that he could find a matching replacement, and the ones who came to shoot the breeze — that he'll miss when his store isn't there next week.

Fairground Hardware, the massive building at the corner of East 30th Street and Walnut Avenue, will close its doors after an auction on Saturday sells off what is left of Robinson's 22 years in business. He's the fifth owner of the hardware store that has been in the same Des Moines location for 75 years. It was built in 1893 and Robinson said in its early years was Corning's Cash Store and the Fairground branch of the Des Moines Library.

Today, he's sorting and tossing, reminiscing and boxing up decades worth of memories that made up his store. There's a stack of books dating to 1911 near the cash register, metal toys beside old car stereos on a table, antique tins and canisters in cardboard flats, ready for bidders.

Mixed in, there are a few hardware items left, from PVC plumbing pipe to furnace filters. And there are the personal items that Robinson added to the business over the years. Fishing accessories, a porthole from a boat, an old horse collar.

"There's just a lot of stuff," Robinson said. "I brought in way too much stuff. I'm kind of a pack rat."

Fairground Hardware has long been a challenging business for Robinson, who said he gravitated toward it because "I was tired of working for other people, so I bought a job."

While he had general knowledge of basic home repairs, fixing screens and other stuff that's come in handy as a hardware store owner, he said there has always been "a large learning curve in certain areas."

"It was a turn-key operation when I bought it," he said. "But over the years they'd change auto keys, and I'd have to know how to cut them. Then there'd be a new and better way to plumb things."

That meant attending twice-a-year trade shows where he'd learn new skills and find out what was trending in business so he could give his customers what they wanted.

"You've got to go out there and find out what's new and different for the customers," he said. Then he pauses.

"I'd done all that, but people like to buy online now, and the millennials don't care to have a personal experience" with a business owner, he said, hitting the proverbial nail on the head in explaining what led to the decision to close. "People's shopping habits have changed, and I'm not on their list."

Robinson said he will take a few weeks to sort through papers and move out his remaining personal items before he turns the property over Feb. 1 to the new owners, who told him they have plans to repurpose the building into a restaurant and bar.

For his next chapter, he plans to do home repair work and run a screen repair business, because that service has been a big part of the hardware store.

"The friendships that I've made with my customers," he says, his voice cracking, "and the people I've got to know. Those were good things."

About the Auction

The auction of all the remaining inventory of Fairground Hardware will begin at 9 a.m. Saturday, Jan. 13. Auctioneer Mark Manfull estimates it will take around five hours to work through everything that's left, from the nuts and bolts and nails and screws to the antiques Robinson has long had on display from the second-story loft.

Some of the unique items include musical instruments, a horse collar, a wooden yoke Manfull estimates at 150 years old, decoys, old wooden chairs and assorted scales used in decades past to weigh nails and other hardware by the pound.

Items that can be carried out should be removed on Saturday. Large items, including shelving and other fixtures, can be picked up by arrangement, Manfull said.

You can view the listing and photos of the items on AuctionZip.com.

Photos by Melissa Myers, Patch