With great consternation, the volunteers at Nathan Adelson thrift store say they will miss their work, their shop and their customers when the store closes down for good on Friday.
And, with even greater disappointment, they say they don’t know why the Nathan Adelson board has decided, beyond negotiation, to shut down the shop four months before its lease in the Maryland Parkway shopping center across the street from UNLV gives out.
The thrift shop has been doing well in recent months, they say. Moreover, it had, this year, finally beat out Savers and Goodwill as the best thrift store in town, according to the Review-Journal’s annual Best in Las Vegas poll. (A board spokesperson couldn’t be reached for comment.)
It is indeed a wonderful shop; not only on account of its gold mine of books, toys and furniture, but also because of its first-rate selection of clothes. There you can find elite apparel from top designers—the Mondis, Evan Picones, Donna Karans, Halstons, Perry Ellises—and not just used, either: Many of the donations come in brand new (but are nevertheless sold at thrift-store rates).
But this is only half the tragedy. The other thing worth lamenting is that the money the thrift shop made went directly to the Nathan Adelson Hospice, a nonprofit program that has provided care to the Las Vegas Valley’s terminally ill since 1978. This is why the volunteers who constitute the entirety of the thrift shop’s staff are so upset by the decision to close. They, too, believe in the cause, they say.