The Ritchie hardware store changes hands, and keeps the key-cutting bench
After thirty-four years, the Kolodziejs are selling to the couple who ran the paint counter. The dog stays too.
The sign taped to the till Monday was eleven words long: same store, same hours, new owners as of October 1. After thirty-four years, Stan and Halina Kolodziej are selling Ritchie Hardware to Devon and Priya Mistry, who have run the paint counter for nine of them.
The store is the last of its kind south of the river between the two big-box postal codes — the place that stocks the one washer, cuts the one key, and knows which furnace filter half the neighbourhood's houses take because half the neighbourhood's houses were built the same year.
The Mistrys are financing the purchase through a vendor take-back, which is how these sales happen when the building is worth more than the business and the seller cares which one survives. "The bank wanted to talk about the land," Stan said Tuesday, restocking the wall of drawer pulls. "Devon wanted to talk about the key machine. That settled it."
The transition plan, as posted beside the till: Stan works Saturdays through the winter, Halina keeps the books until the spring, and Wrench — the shop dog, fourteen, opinionated about couriers — remains in his chair by the window under an arrangement all parties describe as non-negotiable.
