What year did Family Renew Community’s Secret Attic Thrift Store open in the Granada Plaza?
The question, posed by Ormond Beach MainStreet Executive Director Julia Truilo last week, was simple enough. I didn’t know the answer offhand, though. Any records we have that show when the city business license was first issued would be in a file in our administrative offices in Holly Hill. And I’m working mostly from my Ormond Beach home these days because of the coronavirus pandemic. Julia needed the information quickly for a news release she was putting together to announce the winners of a grant competition sponsored by her organization. So I tried my luck with Google, and found an old article from the Orlando Sentinel that was really fun to read. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO SEE IT.
The story was published Nov. 27, 1998, and notes that Family Renew’s thrift store opened in the Granada Plaza less than six months earlier. As some may remember, it was the Secret Attic’s second location. Until the original store in a shopping center on the mainland in Ormond Beach closed years later, the beachside store was known as SA II.
What’s great about the article is that it recaps the origins of Family Renew Community, and celebrates the role of one of the organization’s early presidents, Dan Weitekamp, in setting up the thrift stores. It also mentions Operation 300, a fundraising effort that evolved into the 300 Club and eventually into Family Renew Community’s Guardian Angels Society, which is still going strong today.
Hope you enjoy the article as much as I did! And please watch for the news reports generated by the release Julia was working on the day she called. Family Renew Community’s Secret Attic Thrift Store is one of three winners of $1,500 marketing grants from Ormond Beach MainStreet, funded by TD Charitable Foundation. We’ll be using the money for our Discover Our Values campaign.