Mar 19, 2010

Maggie’s leaves Watervliet for LathamBy Danielle SanzoneTroyRecord.com

Watervliet — For the first time in at least 82 years, the storefront at 528 19th St. will be vacant after the last figurines at Maggie’s Gift Shop are boxed up to be moved this weekend to the business’ new location in Latham.

The Avakian family has purchased the former Vanilla Bean property on Troy-Schenectady Road, which John Avakian points out has nearly the same numerical address since their new location is 521.

“There have been a lot of interesting ironic coincidences like that throughout this process,” he said also noting that he closed on the new building on Nov. 23 and Maggie’s originally opened on Nov. 22, 1985. “It’s like it was meant to be.”

His family has been in the process of moving and packing up the 44,000 items in the store for the past several weeks and they hope to move the majority of everything into the new location this weekend with an optimistic tentative date to open by around Easter. They plan to be open for business again by at least Mother’s Day, said Avakian who remembers helping his father in his family’s grocery store when he was just a baby.

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