After seven decades, iconic Greenville Army Store quits the gentrified West End

The Army Store rocked along selling military surplus gear, knives, helmets and more than a few oddities for seven decades on Greenville’s Main Street.

Now it’s time to go.

Jeff Zaglin, the second-generation owner, sold the two-story property in the West End for $1.34 million in December. He’s closing on Wednesday and moving to a storefront outside Greenville’s downtown to a strip mall on Laurens Road, a main thoroughfare.

The move is one more seismic shift for a once-rundown section of warehouses and cotton mills in the area where Greenville was born. Redevelopment — some call it gentrification — has covered the area with high-end apartments, condominiums, offices and retail, choking out the small stores.

Zaglin sold the property to a group known as 660 S. Main QOZB LLC, whose agent is listed with the S.C. Secretary of State as Linda Gysin, the director of services for Spinx, the convenience store/gas chain.

When asked what is planned for the site, Gysin said there was “nothing to tell, check back in a few months,” and then she hung up.

Zaglin said he didn’t know the plans, but he chose the group over a higher bidder because they said they would keep the building, which was built in 1900. His asking price was $1.29 million. Within days of listing it, he had 11 offers.

The Army Store, which is officially the Greenville Army and Navy Store, was not only a fixture of downtown Greenville but also a place that never truly changed. The wood floors grew creakier over time. The camouflage stuffed racks. Cutting foam rubber — for use in cushions, mattresses, shoes, even rear-end shapers — was a regular task.

Best-sellers over the years included cane poles for people to fish in the nearby Reedy River to 1960s-era bell bottoms to the ever-popular Army costumes for Halloween. The store has served three generations of customers, Zaglin said. He always had time to listen to veterans tell stories and for kids to ask questions.

“I told kids there was no such thing as a stupid question,” he said.

So he’s answered such questions as, “is that real blood on that knife?” or “What is foam rubber?”

Zaglin’s father, Harry, opened the store in 1946. Jeff Zaglin went to work in the store when he was barely in elementary school. For one thing, he was responsible for bringing in the cane poles every night.

When he came home from earning a degree in philosophy at Emory University in Atlanta, Zaglin, now 64, went back to work in the store and has been there ever since. His two older brothers and sister were not interested, and he surmises his background in philosophy is apt education for a retailer.

Zaglin said the change in the neighborhood precipitated the move. The store is located between Falls Park and the Greenville Drive baseball stadium, a thoroughfare more for tourists than for shoppers.

There are now plenty of people living downtown, but Zaglin said they’re not the types to come in for military gear after dropping $1,500 a month on an apartment.

Across the side street, on property Zaglin helped develop, is The Avant, a 12-unit condominium under construction — asking price $810,000 to $2.4 million per unit.

Zaglin also said, as he has said for years, parking is a bear in the West End.

He is looking forward to not hearing “where do you park around here?” as soon as someone comes in the store.

“If I had a penny for every time I’ve heard that…” he said.

It’s bittersweet leaving the West End, he said, but he is excited about the new start,

He’s spent weeks cleaning and boxing. He says he’s like his dad. He never throws anything away. So he’s found some of those old bell bottoms and unearthed his collection of figures that squirt out water when you squeeze them.

All of it is going with him to the new location.

Even the dust.

This story was originally published March 30, 2021 at 11:12 AM.