The outdoors shop Hilton’s Tent City is closing, another victim of a changing retail environment, owner Dave Kramer said Saturday outside the shop in Cambridge’s Central Square.
A closing sign will go up April 1, followed by sales meant to clear out the boots, bags, jackets and other gear that have been staples since the store arrived in 2017, relocated from the Boston location that had been Hilton’s home for 70 years.
Anything that doesn’t sell will get trucked to Kramer’s home in the Massachusetts woods about an hour away, he said. “If I have to sell out of the garage or the attic, I will,” he said.
It’s a blow to Central Square, which is seeing a dozen businesses open – a Green Soul cannabis seller is set to begin sales Friday – but also just lost the Redline Fight Sports gym on Prospect Street at the end of February.
“I’m afraid this is a bigger thing about the uncertainty of the economy coming to Main Street, and we’ll feel it in Central Square,” said Michael Monestime, president of the Central Square Business Improvement District. “I’m curious if this a sign of bigger things, of people tightening their wallets. There are a lot of things at play.”
While he plans to look for another great business to replace Hilton’s and can pull back to think about the situation philosophically – “Central Square continues to turn over,” Monestime said – he is already trying to find a tenant to replace the boxing gym and nearby Walgreens, which is set to close forever on Thursday.
Losing Hilton’s is “a real loss. It’s a true legacy business, with a history going back decades,” Monestime said. “We have a lot of restaurants and we don’t have a ton of soft retail, another reason why this is such a great loss.”
Open since 1947
Hilton’s was founded in 1947 as a military surplus shop by Irving Liss – “He would never say why he named it Hilton’s Tent City,” Kramer said – and thrived as it added more goods for different purposes. After a split with a partner that left Liss focused on camping and hiking and a move from Scollay Square, the business grew into a four-story emporium of outdoors gear on Friend Street, near TD Garden in Boston.
“It was great for many years, until the big-box stores opened,” Kramer said. Still Hilton’s stuck it out. In 2003, the chain competitor “REI moved in. We felt that right away.” City Sports, Eastern Mountain Sports and Sports Authority were all closing locations in the 2010s, and Hilton’s had an added strain in Boston: “We were kind of getting suffocated with the Bruins and Celtics fans. Anytime there was an event, you couldn’t move in that neighborhood.”
With many of its customers already coming from Cambridge and Somerville, shrank its inventory radically to reopen in the spring of 2017 at 565 Massachusetts Ave. in what was once a Citibank next to the square’s Graffiti Alley. It’s done a reasonable business since – busiest on Saturdays – with boots and everyday commuter bags being more a focus of shoppers than hardcore outdoors gear. Blundstone boots and Tilly hats have been the big movers recently, with many visits driven by the season rather than groups planning expeditions: “If it’s raining, we have rain gear,” Kramer said.
Losing to direct sales
With a clientele now mainly from Cambridge, Somerville and Arlington, it’s not enough when Hilton’s is “losing the battle to the manufacturers. They all sell direct, and a lot of them have brick-and-mortar stores [and] the online presence,” Kramer said. Meanwhile, in the shop, “people are coming in, trying on stuff and then buying it online – people come in, ‘Oh, I just want to get my size.’”
Managers decided around November to see how the winter went. “It was going to be a cold, snowy winter – I was telling people we need cold and snow. We got the cold, but not the snow,” Kramer said. “It didn’t help.” Three months’ notice was given to the landlord in February, putting the store closing in May.
“We did outlast many other smaller stores,” Kramer said.
A small REI outpost in Cambridge’s North Point neighborhood that is focused on running and biking goods announced this month that it was closing April 3 after three and a half years.
Kramer said that after 35-plus years at Hilton’s and working six days a week, he expects to take some time off and figure out his next move: “I’ll take a menial job somewhere,” he said, “but not in retail.”
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Well damn! First the Door Store (admittedly my husband’s store), and now this?!