Some, like Donald Lombardi and Patricia Amish, come for something specific. The food aisles sell Natural Country Style Corn Bread and Muffin Mix for $1.65 and a pint container of maple syrup for $5.Īlthough most of Bean's business is mail order - only 15 percent of annual sales, or $30 million, is from the store - two to two and a half million people visit Bean's in Freeport every year, most of them during the summer and before Christmas. The book selection includes ''The Home Book of Taxidermy and Tanning'' ($10.95). Green fiberglass canoes are stacked near the front door. The store sells everything in the Bean catalogue and more, 45,000 items in all. A huge skylight crowns the women's clothing area. There is an 8,500-gallon trout pond in the men's clothing department, with carved ducks flying overhead. The walls and beams are pine, and the entire building smells somewhat like a lumberyard. The carpet is grass green with granite paths quarried in Deer Isle, Me. The result is a cross between Bloomingdale's and a forest glen. Last month it put the final touches on 25,000 additional square feet, which cost $3.5 million and nearly doubled the size of the store. Bean has made changes in keeping with the new character of its hometown.
Though he would not confirm the stories, Dexter Kamilewicz of the Ram Management Company, developer of the project, said, ''Let's just say they are as interested as they can be.''Įven L. Rumored tenants include Calvin Klein, Stetson and Perry Ellis. The hot topic in town is who will move into the clock-tower-topped Freeport Village Square factory outlet center scheduled to open next month. ''There's no use looking backward,'' he said. Many residents, he added, mourn the quieter, quainter Freeport of a few years ago. ''But what he did do is hasten what was already beginning to happen.'' Leighton, who has reopened his store near its earlier site and is now president of the Freeport Merchants Association. ''People keep telling me what a favor the kid who lit that match did for Freeport,'' said Mr. Edgar Leighton's landlord sold the building to a Boston developer who remodeled it, raised the rent and leased it to Dansk. But while the store grew, the town remained the same: the white clapboard buildings of Main Street, the green and gold fields of the farms nearby.Īll that began to change two years ago, on the night a teen-ager set fire to Leighton's Five and Dime on Main Street to disguise a burglary. died in 1967 and since then his grandson, Leon A. L.'s'' store to pick up gear as they headed north for the woods, Mr. When hunters and fishermen began ringing the night bell at ''L. Bean designed the rubber-bottomed, leather-topped Maine Hunting Shoe and gradually created a line of products for the outdoors. There are shops like the Pantry, a self-serve gas station that sells fresh cinnamon buns and homemade ice cream inside. There are full- price stores too, such as Cole-Haan, a shoe and fine leather goods shop, where women's pumps cost $200. Boutiques have sprung up among the outlets, including a shop called Christmas Magic that sells silk angels, silver bells and lacquered nutcrackers year round. Bean's prices are the same as those in its catalogue, the building contains a factory store where floor samples, factory seconds and irregulars are as low as half price. Dansk's Tivoli/Concerto plates, which list for $18, are sold here for $9. Ralph Lauren irregular cotton pullovers that would be $32 in perfect condition are $14. Men's Bass Weejuns that regularly sell for $67 are $49.99. Women's suede and leather Frye boots that list for $125 can be found for $49.95.
''But it's like the whole town is a shopping mall.''įreeport is a town of bargains. ''I expected to find Bean in the middle of a forest,'' Mr. Paul because her father, Larry, had always wanted to visit L. ''I didn't know any of the other stores were here, but I won't let them go to waste,'' said 16-year-old Laura Culligan, sitting on Main Street with a pistachio ice-cream cone in one hand and a newly purchased Ralph Lauren shirt in the other. Denney said, ''and once they get there, they stumble into us.'' ''There are millions of people visiting Bean,'' Mr. seven days a week - because Bean is open 24 hours a day. Like most stores in town, the outlet is open long hours - 9 A.M. ''Bean's the key, that's why we're here,'' said George Denney Jr., acting manager of the 6,000-square-foot Polo/Ralph Lauren factory outlet that opened on Main Street across from Bean last September. The stores that are opening here come not to compete with Bean, but to profit from it. The location is ideal for discount outlets that cannot do business near major retail centers.
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