Old Town staple to close this summer, but there’s a silver lining

Old Town Architectural Salvage owner Grant Rine has some disappointing news, but it comes with a small silver lining.

“We’re done,” he said of the more than 20-year-old shop.

The store at 126 N. St. Francis will close by the end of summer at the latest, but Rine will move some items to his warehouse at 134 N. St. Francis and occasionally will hold a sale.

“We’ll move to our warehouse, and we’re just going to create things out of a lot of things that we have,” he said.

Rine also plans to sell his 15,000-square-foot store space.

“I can’t tell you how many vultures are circling overhead wanting to buy it.”

That’s quite a switch, he said.

“When we bought that building, that was the most derelict part of the city. People were living in our doorstep.”

His specialty has been salvaging architectural finds from old buildings, including from well-known places such as Joyland and the Forum.

“We had a lot of cool Wichita historical artifacts,” he said. “I’ve always been interested in saving old buildings and historic preservation.”

Now, though, he’s having a hard time finding items for his shop.

“We can’t get the quality of merchandise we always wanted. . . . If we could still find the best of the best, it might be a different story.”

He said things cost more, and tastes have changed — including interest in preservation.

“Is it worth saving a door if you can sell it or just bulldoze it?” Rine said.

Though some people are saving the kinds of buildings he used to salvage, he said a lot of others seem to have the mentality to get something moved “and get it to the dump.”

“It’s kind of disturbing.”

Rine said he was green before going green was cool.

“I was in dumpsters pulling stuff out of the trash when I was 3 years old,” he said. “That was 63 years ago.”

Once, he said a woman paid his mother to not let him go through her trash.

“I still dumpster dive. If I see something at a dumpster, I’m diving in.”

Though Rine has started discounts at the store, not everything is on sale.

“Some of the architectural material, we’re guarding it pretty well because we’re not going to get anymore.”

The warehouse sales won’t be frequent, but Rine said they’ll be for “really cool stuff.”

In his day job as a radiation oncologist, Rine has dropped back to working one day a week and will retire by the end of the year. He said the signals were there that now is a good time to close the shop, too.

“It’s been a good run. We had a great time doing it.”