Antiques Dealers Have New Options--Two Sites Wooing Angliana Vendors

Ann Smith has sold antique glassware and furniture at the monthly Lexington Loose Leaf Antique and Collectible Show for 18 years. But she and more than 150 other dealers who rent booth space face an uncertain future...

Developers are planning to convert the show's former home -- a tobacco warehouse site at 528 Angliana Avenue -- into a 317-unit student housing project and effectively leave the antiques dealers who did business there, homeless.  Yesterday, however, things started to look up for the antique dealers displaced by the sale of their former facility.  Two other sites are now competing to attract them into a new antiquing venue.

Vivian Collins and Bobi Gonzales announced yesterday that they and a small group of investors had bought a 120,000 square-foot industrial warehouse at 1211 Manchester Street. They are converting it into space for a monthly antiques show to be called An Antique Affair and said they hope to attract most of the Loose Leaf dealers.

Collins, who has sold at the Loose Leaf show for four years, said she and the other dealers heard rumors that the warehouse was going to be torn down. "We didn't know if Mr. Rose was going to retire, sell the business or what. We were not told anything about the future."

Several dealers lamented the closing of the Loose Leaf show and said they wanted to continue in another location. MERVA Properties LLC bought the warehouse on Manchester on August 31st.  Gonzales is a former business acquaintance of Collins from Las Vegas.

The warehouse is across the street from the old Pepper Distillery.  It is in a section of Manchester Street that developer Barry McNees plans to turn into an arts and entertainment area called the Distillery District.

Gonzales said half of the warehouse will initially be converted to space for a monthly antiques show with space for 300 booths; half will remain warehouse storage space. Rental fees for booth space have not been finalized.  The site has four acres of parking.

Rose's family started the the Lexington Loose Leaf Antique and Collectible Show on Angliana Avenue in a four-acre warehouse they owned. The show ran the second weekend of each month, April through October, when the warehouse was empty of tobacco. Starting with just a few dealers, it grew to more than 150 dealers.