Original Tommy K’s Gets New Life

It’s been about 15 years since you could walk into the old Tommy K’s Video at 1636 Dixwell Ave. and rent a video. After many years, the store will get a new life — peddling not films, but wine and spirits.

Though Tommy K’s Video closed its last location in 2010, the bright red sign across the building’s white façade still screams of a pre-Netflix 1980s when the humble two-story house spawned Connecticut’s largest independent video-rental chain. Now, the owners of the liquor store across the street recently bought it for $300,000 and plan to move their store there.

Tom Kelleher, who sold the building to the liquor store, said that when his parents brought him home from the hospital about 60 years ago, they brought him to that house. For the first ten years of his life, he lived on the upper floor with his parents, Viola and John, who operated a music store on the ground floor.

When he was 10, his family moved but kept the building. A little over a decade passed, and Kelleher was a fresh University of Connecticut graduate eyeing law school or an MBA. But first, he said, ​“I just wanted to do something in the real world for a while.”

On Nov. 9, 1984, he opened his first business venture in the Dixwell house.

“When I opened, I was advised by a bunch of people that video was going to be a six-month fad,” he recalled.

Whoever told him that was wrong. Tommy K’s Video went on to become the largest independent video chain in Connecticut, with 18 stores throughout the state.

“That was a fun business. I wish it was still around,” Kelleher said.

As time went on, Kelleher said he began to focus on buying retail buildings. That, in the long-term, seemed to be a more stable business venture.

“Nothing lasts forever in a business sense, but at least the real estate can be bought, paid off, and repurposed for something else,” he said.

Kelleher said he ended up owning about half the buildings that had a Tommy K’s. He still owns those buildings and rents them out.

Throughout the state, retail locations with Tommy K’s Video gained an ensemble of three stores: Tommy K’s Video, Tommy’s Tanning, and the Daily Grind Coffee shop. Kelleher said he tried to alternate the three, with a business in between them. Daily Grind no longer exists, though Tommy’s Tanning is alive and well, as is another venture: Tommy’s Wax Center. Both have locations in Hamden, just north of the so-called ​“Magic Mile.” 

The original Tommy K’s Video building closed as a retail location about 15 years ago, said Kelleher. ​“The business was still growing and we couldn’t accommodate all the traffic there,” he said. The building was cut up by walls rather than being an open box, he said.

He began using the building for office space and storage, he said, until moving the offices to North Haven about a year ago.

That whole time, the red Tommy K’s Video sign has remained on the front of the building. Kelleher said that was a strategic move. When he installed it, Hamden’s zoning laws were more relaxed about sign size. Now, a sign of that size would not be allowed. By keeping the sign up, whoever decides to replace it, he said, will be grandfathered into the old regulations, and can display a sign of generous proportions.

Tommy K’s To A.L.K.

Directly across the street from the 1636 Dixwell is another building with a red sign over its façade that displays a large capitalized ​“K.” A.L.K. Wine and Liquors rents 1651 Dxwell, next to the now-vacant Mauro Motors. It moved in in 2013, taking over the spot from a previous liquor store owner.

Ankit Patel operates A.L.K. with two other business partners. He also operates West Haven Discount Liquor in West Haven.

He said he bought the building across the street from his current location because it was a ​“good opportunity.” In that building he will no longer have to pay rent, as he does in his current location, he said. Michael Mauro, owner of Mauro Motors, owns A. L. K.’s current location.

He said he has no specific plans yet for the building, other than that it will house his store.