Ayers Variety & Hardware closes in Westover after 78 years

Arlington County · July 21, 2026

Ayers Variety & Hardware closed on July 19, 2026, ending a 78-year run in Arlington's Westover neighborhood, ARLnow reported. The store had operated in the Westover Shopping Center at 5853 Washington Blvd. since 1948.

Co-owners Kristy Peterkin and her brother, Keith Kaplan, decided several years ago to step away when the store's lease expired. They had expected to hand the business to a new owner and keep it running, but the sale collapsed late in the process. "We really thought we were going to find a buyer," Peterkin told ARLnow.

ARLnow first reported the planned closing on July 5, 2026, and customers spent the final weeks saying goodbye. The last morning open drew a steady stream of shoppers making final purchases. Two posters filled with handwritten notes and signatures hung in the windows, praising the staff's helpfulness and telling the owners the neighborhood would miss them. One note recalled 44 years of weekly visits; another expressed disbelief that the store was closing at all and wished the owners a good retirement.

Jennifer Owens, a longtime regular, described the final day as bittersweet, telling ARLnow that walking the mostly empty aisles felt sad, and that she heard shoppers thanking employees and the owners for their years of service as people reminisced through the store.

Across the decades, the store paired hardware with a variety-store inventory. Its staff built a reputation for tracking down hard-to-find items and for spending time on customers' household problems, coming to know generations of shoppers in the process. The owners plan to keep the shop's Facebook page active to point former customers toward other sources for that merchandise; a page administrator wrote on July 18, 2026, that the page would stay up and thanked customers for the response since the closing was announced.

No replacement tenant has been announced for the storefront. The store's signs, and the customers' posters in the windows, were still in place as of July 20, 2026. Peterkin has said the space must be broom clean, meaning emptied and swept for the landlord, by July 31, 2026.