Flooding finally forces Hollowood to move its music store
and its giant Stratocaster out of McKees Rocks

Retailer heads to high ground

Friday, February 18, 2005

Yesterday, the guitar left the Rocks.

Workers from Shamrock Signs removed the 20-foot, cream-colored Fender Stratocaster guitar from the red brick facade of Hollowood Music and Sound in McKees Rocks in the early morning and placed it on a flatbed truck bound for the store's new location.

	J. Monroe Butler II, Post-Gazette A worker from Shamrock Signs prepares to remove the 20-foot neon guitar from the Hollowood Music and Sound store in McKees Rocks early yesterday. Click photo for larger image.

After losing a half-million dollars in merchandise when Chartiers Creek overran its banks and flooded the store on Sept. 17, the Hollowood brothers -- Jim, Gary and Don -- decided to move to The Pointe in North Fayette in late March, taking away the largest and one of the few remaining major retail businesses in McKees Rocks.

For more than a decade, the guitar's neon lights brightened a Chartiers Avenue left blighted by empty storefronts, decaying buildings and a half-century of industrial decline. "Big Jim" Hollowood, who founded the store in his basement almost 40 years ago, purchased the sign after a fire destroyed the business in 1993, hoping to make a big comeback.

By then, McKees Rocks had already lost thousands of jobs after the closure of Pittsburgh & Lake Erie Railroad's car shop and the Federal Enameling & Stamping Co. plant. Its population declined by nearly two-thirds, from 18,000 in 1930 to 6,600 in the last census.

But Hollowood's staff established the borough as a regional center for musicians, selling a wide range of new and used guitars, basses, amplifiers, keyboards, PA systems and all the accompanying equipment. The massive Stratocaster helped attract roadies for touring bands in need of supplies, just as McDonald's golden arches attract hungry motorists.

Chartiers Avenue still has a number of businesses, including several used furniture stores, a florist, an archery shop and a tattoo parlor. A nearby shopping plaza is home to Jim Crivelli Chevrolet and several chain stores. And Focus on Renewal Inc., a community organization, will open a cultural center later this year, and the directors of the borough's recently created development corporation are negotiating with several developers.

But the Hollowood family's decision to move is a disappointment for those planning revitalization strategies.

"We don't want to lose them. They bring a lot of people into town," Mayor Jack Muhr said. "It's a major blow to the borough."

Richard Vith, 36, who opened Razor Rick's Tattoo less than a year ago, said many of his customers carry guitar cases, and he worries about his business' future after Hollowood leaves.

"They've been an icon here," the lifelong McKees Rocks resident said. "It makes you wonder what your own chances for survival are."

Jim Hollowood started giving guitar lessons and selling instruments out of the basement of his two-story home on Bench Drive at a time when rock 'n' roll was taking over popular music. Teenage garage bands were starting to pop up across the country, and they needed equipment.

Hollowood was one of the first retailers to rent out PA systems to fledgling artists, his sons said. He would sometimes tell a band to take a system and leave it sitting in front of the garage when they finished a gig.

The family opened their first Chartiers Avenue location in the early 1970s and it quickly grew, adding the Johnny B. Goods used instrument store and a sound system rental and installation business.

They also built a loyal customer base. Bill Jablonsky, a guitar salesman, said that during his 13 years at the store he has sold three or more guitars to as many as 100 regular customers.

In 1993, a fire gutted the three-story, 19,200-square foot building at 601 Chartiers Ave. The family decided to rebuild on the same spot, using insurance money.

"We were all born and raised in the Rocks, and our father wanted us to keep the business here," Jim Hollowood Jr. said of Big Jim, who died in 1999.

But three years later, the flood of 1996 soaked their basement with 8 feet of water, destroying hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment. And then the remnants of Hurricane Ivan brought the waters back on Sept. 17.

That night, after hours of hauling soaked sound systems from their basement, Don, Jim and Gary took a break in their upstairs offices.

"We've had enough," Jim Hollowood remembered telling his brothers. "It's time to move."

Mayor Muhr and members of the borough council met with the Hollowoods several times after the flood and tried to persuade them to stay. The brothers asked the borough to dredge Chartiers Creek, but Muhr said the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has told him there is no money for such a huge undertaking.

"You're talking millions and millions of dollars," he said.

Muhr also suggested that they purchase a new building in McKees Rocks, but the Hollowoods were not willing to invest in extensive renovations unless they could attract new customers. They will, however, keep their rental and sound system installation business in McKees Rocks.

The Pointe, where the store will share a shopping plaza with dozens of chain businesses, will let Hollowood reach beyond its regular customers.

"That's how America shops," said Don Hollowood. "They go to the mega-malls."

Staff and customers at the store Wednesday night seemed to agree.

"It's going to be different," said Anthony Duran, a skinny 18-year-old guitarist from Kennedy whose father introduced him to the store two years ago. "But out there you'll have so many people."

"I'm ecstatic," said a black-clad Jablonsky as he leaned up against the glass display case that runs the length of Hollowood's first-floor showroom. "I don't like being woken up at 3 a.m. to carry gear out of the basement because of flooding."

Earlier that evening, about a half-dozen members of the McKees Rocks Chamber of Commerce met at the nearby Hamilton Building on May Avenue, expressing a guarded optimism about the borough's future.

"It's a temporary setback," Taris Vrcek, executive director of the McKees Rocks Community Development Corp., said of Hollowood's departure.

Sister Barbara Czyrnik, associate director of Focus on Renewal, couldn't hide her disappointment when she heard about the 20-foot guitar.

"So they're taking it with them?" Czyrnik said. "That's a loss."