To open women’s boutique on South Street

By Zander Frost, Chronicle Staff Writer

Ali Gazetos Mineo will open a women’s boutique — Floro’s Mercantile — in the South Street storefront where her family’s New Way Lunch once operated.

It will be located on the first floor of the 15 South Street building that Chris Patten is renovating.

Ms. Gazetos Mineo hopes to open within a few months and says she plans to offer “elevated basics for women that I feel are hard to find locally.”

It will have lines of new women’s clothing — nothing vintage. “I’ll offer some handbags and accessories, but I’m really going to try to stick to mostly clothing.”

Ms. Gazetos Mineo said she wants women to “know they can get specific things that they need for events and for work.” Also, styling and shopping services for customers who are shopping for women. “And I am going to have my own line to launch — a few pieces of clothing that have my logo.”

Floro’s is named for Ms. Gazetos Mineo’s great-grandfather, John Floro, who founded New Way Lunch. She notes, “John Floro had five daughters, and they all loved clothes and were very fashionable. That was another reason why I picked the name.”

New Way Lunch moved across and down South Street to its current location, a former bus station, in 2008.

“We’ve been talking about opening up a boutique in my family for a couple of years, but we just never found the right space, the right building,” she said.

When Chris Patten began his renovation, Ms. Gazetos Mineo says, “I thought, Well, it’d be cool if we could go back into where we originally were.”

She is keeping the exposed brick interior — matching the old New Way look.

Ms. Gazetos Mineo operates New Way Lunch with her brother Nick Gazetos and parents Peter and Susan Gazetos, with Glens Falls and Warrensburg locations.

The shop, she says, is a “passion project” that will give her a chance to experiment.

“With the New Way,” she said, people expect consistency and tradition, “to keep it going the proper way.” With Floro’s, “I can be creative and do something else and branch out a little bit.”

Ms. Gazetos Mineo sees retail growing a lot during Glens Falls’ next “chapter.”

“You have more and more people that are living down here. It’s saturated with restaurants now,” she said. “The city needs to grow in other ways, and I think the next big growth is with retail.”

“There’s a lot of great little stores,” she said, but there’s not yet a critical mass to “draw people that want to walk around and shop. I think that there will be soon.”

“People really went online to shop, and now they’re pushing the other way. They want to touch and feel things and go into different local brick and mortar places.”

Her planned hours are Tues.-Thurs., 11-6; Fri.-Sat., 11-8, and Sunday 11-4.

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