'Missing tooth' of Rantoul Street closes

After 35 years, Meineke Car Care Center will give way to a new apartment building

Chris Crowley has seen it all after 35 years as the owner of the Meineke Car Care Center on Rantoul Street, and we’re not talking about battered mufflers and squealing brakes.

From his vantage point inside the shop, Crowley has been an eyewitness to the remarkable changes on Rantoul Street over the last two decades. Six-story apartment buildings have sprouted all around him, so much so that Crowley’s small garage, set back from the street, has been called the “missing tooth” of Rantoul.

“People used to say to me, ‘I drive by here all the time and I didn’t know you were there,’” Crowley said.

Chris Crowley on the last day inside his Meineke Car Care Center on Rantoul Street.

As of noon on Friday, right. Crowley, 60, closed up shop and headed into retirement. He reached out to The Beverly Beat because he wanted to make sure all of his customers know about the closing, and most of all to thank them.

“Last night I was sitting in the office thinking that I’m so thankful,” he said. “Thankful to the people of Beverly.”

Crowley has a good story to tell not just because he’s ending a longtime Beverly business, but because of his observations about the changes on Rantoul Street. He knows some people don’t like all the changes and complain about traffic and parking.

But to his eyes, it’s been mostly all good. When he first took over the business in 1990, he said he had to move all of the cars inside his garage at night because he was worried they’d be vandalized. He can tick off the names of the bars that used to line the street where, let’s just say, you might not want to bring the whole family. I reminded him that one of those bars, The Press Box, even installed metal detectors.

“I think people forget sometimes what Rantoul Street used to look like,” he said.

Crowley, who lives in Beverly with his wife, Diana, said the street is now hopping on most nights, and not in the metal detector kind of way. The new apartments attracted new restaurants, coffee shops and even a gourmet chocolate shop.

“You go out on a Thursday night and Rantoul Street is alive,” Crowley said.

So what’s going to happen now that the shop is closing? How about another apartment building? Crowley has an agreement to sell the building to Sarah Barnat, a developer who built the Holmes apartment building right across the street. She’s planning to build a five-story building with four stories of apartments and retail on the first floor.

As I interviewed Crowley in his cramped office, Janet Scialdone sat quietly working away on her computer as her dog, Sophie, bounced around like it was her own home. Scialdone has been the bookkeeper there for 32 years and runs the office. Crowley calls her “boss.”

Asked how she felt about the closing, Scialdone said, “Very sad.”

Crowley said it must not have been easy for Scialdone to work in the same small office with him for so many years.

“But you’re a great guy,” she told him.

“Same as you,” he said.

It was about 11 a.m. when I got up to leave. Crowley said it was “surreal” to think he was closing up for good in an hour.

“Beverly has really been a wonderful, wonderful place to do business,” he said.