The Last of Loma Vista

The Loma Vista Hardware Store at 311 Westport Road is closing. The building is nearly a century old and Chuck Dean has been in business there since the mid-1990s. The main floor is going to be converted by Dean and his son Todd Dean into a skateboarder's dream and an extension of the skateboard shop in the building. "Loma Vista's hardware operation started in 1974 in a shop near the Bannister Mall area. Chuck Dean and company moved into the Westport Road location in 1995. It didn't need much in the way of alteration, as 311 Westport had been a hardware store since 1916, Dean said. The current iteration still boasts a lot of the original installations...They proved to be valuable hardware themselves, as Dean had no problem selling off the aged accouterments."