Brine’s Sporting Goods To Leave Square

After 137 years in Harvard Square, Brine’s Sporting Goods is taking its baseball bats, hockey sticks and soccer balls to a new location in Belmont at the end of March.

The overhead costs were too expensive for the store—which claims to be the nation’s oldest family-run sporting store—to remain in the Square, according to owner Jim Brine. “Rent is high for what the traffic is these days,” he said.

Nearby store owners agreed, lamenting the loss of a part of Harvard Square history.

“He sold good quality goods...but rents are always up and never down,” said Angela Petrovic, who owns the Baak Gallery three stores away from Brine’s. “Many stores will go out. There’s not enough business.”

Stephen Zedros, manager of Brattle Street Florist, located next to Brine’s Sporting Goods, worried that a new tenant might not bring as much business as Brine’s to the Brattle Street region of the Square.

“It’s very sad because we’ve worked hand in hand for many years,” Zedros said. “We’re both family businesses...Will another store draw the same traffic? They were a good draw.”

Brine’s Sporting Goods is moving to the corner of Church Street and Trapelo Road in Belmont, next to Belmont Wheelworks, a large bicycle shop.  The new Brine’s will have the same floor space, but it will only be one story tall, unlike the two-story space in the Square.

“We looked at a lot of places and this one seems like a good fit—people want to drive to wherever they’re headed and there’s a lot of parking nearby,” Brine said.

Brine said that competition from malls and the Internet had hurt his business at the Square. But he said that the opening of Eastern Mountain Sports (EMS) across the street 15 months ago had not cut into his business.

EMS Assistant Manager Jim Wood agreed that the two stores were not competitors.

“I feel like we’ve always complemented each other,” Wood said. “We’re more of an outdoors store and they’re more of a sporting goods store. It’s sad that they’re leaving.”

Wood added that EMS has no plans to move from its current location in the One Brattle Square building, despite rumors to the contrary.

Richard Getz, the manager of the building where Brine’s Sporting Goods has been renting space in the Square, could not be reached for comment.

But Petrovic, whose jewelry and art business has operated near the Square for the last 28 years, hoped that the new tenant would not be a chain.

“Chains are not for Harvard Square,” she said, citing the vacancies across the street at One Brattle Square as examples of businesses that failed because of high rents. Its empty storefronts once housed chains such as HMV Records, Express, and The Limited.

Cambridge resident Nadja Strucker expected that a chain would take the place of Brine’s.

“It’s sad. It’s probably going to become some cell phone store,” Strucker said.

Strucker’s sister, Margo Strucker, who was with her outside of Brine’s Sporting Goods on Saturday, said that the store’s selection had always been unique.

Brine’s Sporting Goods also has locations in Sudbury and Concord. Brine said that both are doing well.

—Staff writer Joseph M. Tartakoff can be reached at tartakof@fas.harvard.edu.