Kitchen-Bathroom Showroom to Replace Realty Office

Kevin Llewellyn and John J. Smith, two longtime Long Beach residents, are waiting on a mercantile license to arrive in order to open their kitchen and bathroom cabinet showroom at a realty office that was wiped out in Hurricane Sandy.

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The partners already have their cabinets, countertops and tiles on display in their new store, at 880 W. Beech St., the site of the former Coldwell Banker/Beach West Realty.

“We could be open by next Monday,” Llewellyn said.

The business partners were about to open their first store at Center Cabinet in Island Park before the hurricane destroyed that store. “We were just about to sign the lease and the storm hit,” Llewellyn said.

Smith has more than 30 years experience as a contractor in the Long Beach area and he was looking to do something different. He asked Llewellyn, who worked in Manhattan, to partner with him. When their plans for Island Park fell through, they kept looking and found a vacancy in storm-ravaged Long Beach.

After Sandy destroyed the West End building, Coldwell Banker moved its operations to the realty’s other location, at 152 E. Park Ave. in Long Beach, and divided their former office into two units for rent, one of which remains vacant. When Llewellyn and Smith finally open for business, their store hours will be 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday to Saturday.  
“We don’t have expensive materials,” Llewellyn said. “He do have a highline and a lowline and we have an intermediate line.”

With Long Beach residents and business owners looking to rebuild after the storm, the business partners hope their store can come in handy for many of them.

“When you come to the West End you see a lot of empty stores down here,” Llewellyn said. “We’re trying to help build the community back up, a little bit at a time.”

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