Drew Dvorshak, Josh Gunter, Cassie Parker, Chris Vazquez and Jay Portlance (owner).
Jay Portlance has fond childhood memories of visiting an independent hardware store in his Washington D.C. neighborhood. That is, before that store was converted to an Ace Hardware.
So a few months ago, when it looked like the iconic Del Ray hardware store, Executive Lock & Key Service, would be closing, he bought it.
On Jan. 1, the store reopened as Del Ray Hardware Store under new ownership, with plans to expand their inventory and introduce updated technology to the store operations. Portlance bought the store at 2003-B Mt. Vernon Ave. from Chris Harvey in December, after Portlance’s wife read in a local publication about Harvey’s plans to retire and sell the store. Harvey had opened the store, which operated under the name of Harvey’s locksmith business, Executive Lock and Key Service, in the mid-1990s.
They talked it over for a few days and made an offer to Harvey. Because they wanted to open on the first day of the new year, they had ten days to get the store up and running. Portlance renamed the store Del Ray Hardware, which is what most residents had come to call it.
Portlance has lived in the D.C. area his whole life. He grew up in Montgomery County, Md. and attended both high school and college in Washington, D.C. Now working as a Realtor, Portlance and his wife moved to Del Ray in 2019.
While remodeling their home, Portlance frequented the Executive Lock and Key Service hardware shop. When the announcement came that the shop might close if no one bought it, Portlance shared in the general anxiety of his fellow Del Ray residents. He didn’t want the shop to disappear, so he bought it.
Now he’s juggling his real estate work while also running a hardware store.
“It’s one of the few things in the neighborhood that’s the only one of its kind, right?” Portlance said. The Del Ray community would agree. Drew Dvorshak, one of four employees Portlance hired when he bought the shop, said that support from their neighbors has been effusive.
“I have probably spoken to 50 people who didn’t necessarily need anything, but they walked in here to say how happy they were that this was going to remain a hardware store and expressed thanks that we did it for the community,” Dvorshak said. Dvorshak, who is also a Virginia native, came onboard the day Portlance bought the shop. Like the other employees, he had reached out independently to Portlance to inquire about a job.
He’s an independent hardware aficionado of sorts, having worked at several different stores during high school, college and during career transitions later in life. He attributes his knowledge and affinity for hardware to his father and grandfather recruiting him to help with weekend projects around the house and at his grandfather’s home in rural Pennsylvania. His grandfather was an engineer on a B-17 flying fortress during World War II. Dvorshak remembers the day his grandfather, father and uncle installed electricity in his grandfather’s garage.
“I saw firsthand what the dangers of electricity can be because the box was live when one of them turned the box on. And my grandfather didn't know and he went to grab a wrench off the box,” Dvorshak said. “It shot him across the room about six feet and he said every curse word I had ever heard. But he was OK.”
For Portlance, shop management has come naturally since he had 15 years of experience bartending and managing sports bars in both D.C. and Austin, Texas before he started working in real estate. For himself and his employees, the main challenge has been managing the store's famously eclectic inventory. They have already knocked down a wall and shortened the checkout counter, which gave them 500 square feet of extra space to make wider aisles that are ADAcompliant and, yes, more pet-friendly.
The store is a work in progress, but it maintains its old charm. The characteristic floor-to-ceiling pegboard is arrayed with an astonishing variety of mops, rakes, lightbulbs and those oddly specific things you might not even think to look for until you need them, like blender sealing rings. And there’s more to come — in April, Portlance is planning to expand the garden section with outdoor vegetables and herbs.
Dvorshak, for his part, thinks Portlance is exactly what the store needed — an Alexandria resident with a commitment to stick around. When people come in to ask about the new owner, Portlance is usually working out on the floor, or perhaps pausing his work to offer a treat to a dog from the black bucket waiting by the door.
“I think that there is a great symbiosis here,” Dvorshak said. “With the community, you know, they love what Jay is doing. And Jay — living in this neighborhood — he loves doing it.”
