Janis Monachina is the new owner of The Shop Around The Corner, the newly renovated store inside The Red Lion Inn, in the space where the hotel’s gift shop used to be.
The Shop Around The Corner inside The Red Lion Inn in Stockbridge has been fully renovated and reinvented by new owner Janis Monachina, in the space where the hotel’s gift shop used to be.
The Shop Around The Corner inside The Red Lion Inn in Stockbridge has been fully renovated and reinvented by new owner Janis Monachina, in the space where the hotel’s gift shop used to be.
The Shop Around The Corner inside The Red Lion Inn in Stockbridge has been fully renovated and reinvented by new owner Janis Monachina, in the space where the hotel’s gift shop used to be.
Janis Monachina and her daughter Julia Keenan are the new owner and director of operations, respectively, of The Shop Around The Corner, the newly renovated store inside The Red Lion Inn.
The Shop Around The Corner inside The Red Lion Inn in Stockbridge has been fully renovated and reinvented by new owner Janis Monachina, in the space where the hotel’s gift shop used to be.
The Shop Around The Corner inside The Red Lion Inn in Stockbridge has been fully renovated and reinvented by new owner Janis Monachina, in the space where the hotel’s gift shop used to be.
The Shop Around The Corner inside The Red Lion Inn in Stockbridge has been fully renovated and reinvented by new owner Janis Monachina, in the space where the hotel’s gift shop used to be.
The Shop Around The Corner inside The Red Lion Inn in Stockbridge has been fully renovated and reinvented by new owner Janis Monachina, in the space where the hotel’s gift shop used to be.
Official ‘shop dog’ George models some of the items the newly renovated store has to offer at The Shop Around The Corner, inside The Red Lion Inn in Stockbridge.
Janis Monachina is the new owner of The Shop Around The Corner, the newly renovated store inside The Red Lion Inn, in the space where the hotel’s gift shop used to be.
The Shop Around The Corner inside The Red Lion Inn in Stockbridge has been fully renovated and reinvented by new owner Janis Monachina, in the space where the hotel’s gift shop used to be.
The Shop Around The Corner inside The Red Lion Inn in Stockbridge has been fully renovated and reinvented by new owner Janis Monachina, in the space where the hotel’s gift shop used to be.
The Shop Around The Corner inside The Red Lion Inn in Stockbridge has been fully renovated and reinvented by new owner Janis Monachina, in the space where the hotel’s gift shop used to be.
Official ‘shop dog’ George models some of the items the newly renovated store has to offer at The Shop Around The Corner, inside The Red Lion Inn in Stockbridge.
STOCKBRIDGE — For interior designer and home stylist Janis Monachina, becoming the proprietor of the Red Lion Inn’s reimagined gift shop is like closing a circle.
Janis Monachina and her daughter Julia Keenan are the new owner and director of operations, respectively, of The Shop Around The Corner, the newly renovated store inside The Red Lion Inn.
Monachina, a Lee native who opened The Shop Around the Corner at the inn on Memorial Day Weekend, had been manager of The Pink Kitty gift store in the same space just out of college. More recently known as the Red Lion Inn Gift Shop, it occupies a wing off the lobby of the 1773 inn purchased and restored by Jack and Jane Fitzpatrick in 1968, who reopened it a year later.
“It’s an extension of what I do,” Monachina said. “Key to this little operation is that we’re in the iconic, historic Red Lion Inn. It makes it a different kind of shop, and I have a lot more freedom to be a little more artistic and self-expressive.”
She named the new shop, The Shop Around The Corner, as a tribute to the much-loved 1940 film starring James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan, remade in 1998 as “You’ve Got Mail,” with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. Indeed, it's around the corner from the lobby.
The Shop Around The Corner inside The Red Lion Inn in Stockbridge has been fully renovated and reinvented by new owner Janis Monachina, in the space where the hotel’s gift shop used to be.
Monachina, a graduate of Lee High School, Berkshire Community College and later the co-owner of the Crabtree Cottage bed-and-breakfast in Lee for 19 years, got her first job at the Red Lion when she was in her 20s.
From 1983 to 1989, she managed The Pink Kitty, which had been created by the well-known innkeeper for the Fitzpatricks at the time, Betsy Holtzinger.
“I was very young to be the manager, my first official job, and I learned so much from Betsy and ‘Mrs. Fitz,’ ” Monachina said. “When I took over this shop, I thought of all those days here and how to incorporate the categories they established in the ‘80s with an elevated sense of style that has become normal all these years later.”
Monachina had also worked at Country Curtains, the home furnishings company founded by the Fitzpatricks in 1957 that closed in 2017.
Now, the new gift shop, which she’s leasing from the inn, is a family enterprise; Monachina’s husband, Jeff Keenan, handled the renovation and their daughter, Julia Keenan, 30, is the director of operations and an artist with a line of pottery to be sold at the store.
She also has close ties to the local art world.
“She’s also going to be my social media director,” Monachina said. “That’s wonderful for someone my age to have someone her age in charge of that. She’s already making a splash,” especially with marketing and the store’s Instagram account.
“We’re going to be working a lot together,” she said, “and I could not have done this without Jeff; he’s a carpenter by trade and he gave me all of this time to completely renovate the store. He feels that this shop is as much his as mine. This is a passion project.”
The reopened store with multigenerational appeal has a jewelry department, lotions and potions, pajamas and home decor, as well as a children’s section with an array of stuffed animals.
It carries a line of Smeg small appliances, “a very trendy brand,” Monachina pointed out — vintage blenders, pop-up retro toasters, freezers, juicers and tea kettles, among other products.
The Shop Around The Corner inside The Red Lion Inn in Stockbridge has been fully renovated and reinvented by new owner Janis Monachina, in the space where the hotel’s gift shop used to be.
While visitors staying at the inn are likely patrons, she also hopes to attract walk-in tourists, locals and second-home owners — “something for everyone.”
“Because of my love of decor, creating and curating my own life and home, I feel like it’s a perfect fit here,” Monachina said, citing her early experience at the inn in her youth and her life experience since then. “I feel like I can bring back that hospitality culture that I learned from the Fitzes and Betsy.”
Noting that she wasn’t looking to run a gift shop, she said, “I just walked in at the right moment,” with the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic receding. “I saw an opportunity for coming back.”
Sarah Eustis of the Fitzpatrick family ownership group and founder and CEO of the Main Street Hospitality operating company, was receptive, Monachina recalled. “At the first meeting we had, everything was in sync, what we wanted with the shop, and she completely gave me the freedom to do it, for my own self-expression.”
The Shop Around The Corner inside The Red Lion Inn in Stockbridge has been fully renovated and reinvented by new owner Janis Monachina, in the space where the hotel’s gift shop used to be.
“After meeting Janis, I thought, it’s the right time and the right place,” Eustis said. “She has wonderful style and great taste, and I think it also complements what Township Four is doing,” she added, referring to the floristry and home shop that recently opened in the adjacent former Country Curtains space.
The Shop Around the Corner is open seven days, with current hours from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Sunday.
Clarence Fanto can be reached at cfanto@yahoo.com.
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