NV, which opened in September 2005, occupied one of these spaces. The store sought to provide "mainstream, trendy clothing" to college students, store owner Rocio Menoscal said. She explained that business was so bad, however, that the store was forced to shut down in October 2006.
Menoscal, who also owns Traditionally Trendy, said the size of the store was problematic because it required several employees to run. She said that employees can be hard to come by in Hanover.
NV's location, below Rare Essentials, was also bad for business, according to Menoscal.
"We had a good response about our store when people knew about it," she said. "A lot of people saw that we were below Rare Essentials and assumed that we were the same thing."
Many inquiries have been made with regard to the space, said Robin Burdette, office and property manager at the Bayson Company, the building's owner. Numerous prospective tenants have planned to use the space as a cafe or restaurant. Such a use would be problematic, however, due to Hanover's lack of parking and its zoning laws which maintain that there must be a certain number of parking spaces per seat in a restaurant.
The other empty space in Hanover is located at 8 South Main Street and was previously occupied by Lyme Angler, a fishing store. The store moved to Lebanon Street in September 2005 and became Hanover Outdoors.
The store moved in order to own its own building, said Robert Christensen, real estate property manager for the Dartmouth College Real Estate Office. Moving also allowed the store to change its concept and expand its range of outdoors goods, he added.
So far, the Real Estate Office has turned away several prospective tenants interested in opening eateries. The office turned these tenants down because it felt they "did not have the financial wherewithal to start a restaurant," Christensen said. At the moment, the office is open to any options, he added.
The empty spaces in Hanover have renewed the debate over Hanover being a town composed primarily of independent retailers.
Both Christensen and Burdette said that they would be willing to rent to either a chain or independent store, while stressing that they both seek a healthy balance between the two in Hanover.
For Christensen, one of the advantages to chain stores is that they tend to be more financially stable.
"I think that the chain stores are able to weather downturn in business a little bit better," Christensen said, whose office rents space to the Gap and the Hanover Inn, among others.
Others, however, find chain stores detrimental to Hanover's marketplace. Independent stores create a "true marketplace," where customers can express what they do and do not want, and the retailer responds to the these needs, Rare Essentials owner Lynn Kochanek said. Chain stores do not have such a personable relationship with the customer, she said.
"These big box stores are a disservice to the community," Kochanek said. "They aren't responding to the needs of the town, they're just putting the same product in the window as they do in every other town."
Hanover, however, is preferential toward chain stores and offers them more favorable lease agreements, Kochanek said.
"Dartmouth, which owns much of the real estate in Hanover, prefers a more 'stable' tenant," Kochanek said, before adding that Rare Essentials pays the highest rent per square foot in Hanover.
Christensen, however, stated that the Dartmouth Real Estate Office does not give preference to national chains.
"We try hard to rent to strong independent stores as opposed to national chains," he said.
The rent in Hanover also makes it very difficult for some independent stores to compete, Kochanek said. The space previously occupied by NV, which as an underground store has one of the lowest rents in Hanover, costs $30 per square foot, which works out to about $4,000 per month.
