Category: Business Beat

Rick Vayo’s work isn’t always fun and games. But the prolific developer’s latest venture, a downtown store called Bamp’s Toy Vault, is exactly that. Last Thursday morning, eight days before its Oct. 24 opening, a surprisingly relaxed Vayo stands in the 36 Main St. shop amid a cluster of construction materials, equipment, display racks, and […]

Kingston has opened the spigot to speed up redevelopment of the languishing Kingston Collection mall, a move that could flush Plymouth’s hopes of attracting a Costco down the drain. On July 31, the Kingston Water Commission lifted a moratorium on all new connections to the town’s drinking water system – a ban it imposed in […]

The lack of a truly “nice” hotel in the downtown and waterfront area has long been a drag on Plymouth’s tourism industry. Sure, there are charming bed and breakfasts in the business district, but that type of accommodation has narrow appeal. (“What time does the gym open?”) There are several perfectly pleasant chain hotels farther […]

Stability isn’t a word that often pops up when the subject is retail or restaurant businesses. They rise and fall on short-lived trends, customers’ whims, labor and supply chain costs, and other hard-to-control (or predict) factors. Like one person’s fixation on tariffs, for example. National chains come and go like limited TV series (so long, […]

When the Plymouth Independent site went live on Nov. 21 of last year, the first batch of stories included one by Fred Thys about the status of the MBTA commuter rail station at Cordage Park. The headline read: “You still can’t get there from here.” More than a year later – and three and a […]

Editor’s note: Unlike our news stories, this column also includes the author’s opinions. “Change” is the word of the year in Plymouth. Maybe the word of the decade. Plymouth is changing. Plymouth has changed. It’s changed too much or too little. It’s changed for the worse, for the better. Embrace it, rail against it, help […]

Plenty has been posted on social media lately about live music in downtown Plymouth. Hundreds of commenters have reacted to reporter Fred Thys’s July 25 story about a testy exchange between Select Board member Charlie Bletzer and Erin Murphy, who owns the Su Casa restaurant on Main Street. The back-and-forth dragged out over two meetings, […]

Everyone loved Benny’s. But not enough to keep the retro-style department store from going dark seven years ago. The family-owned, Rhode Island-based chain closed all 31 Benny’s in 2017, including its Plymouth location off Court Street. The Bromberg family, which had owned it since 1924, cited “the changing face of retailing today and the dominance […]

I’ve been looking for an opening to write this column. Now I’ve got a few of them to mention. A bunch of businesses have recently opened in the downtown area, or are on track to do so soon. They’re welcome additions to the town’s commercial tax base, which needs all the help it can get […]