Rehoboth’s Loungin’ Lizzard opening new downtown location

If all goes as planned, which is saying a lot these days, Rehoboth Avenue’s Loungin’ Lizzard will have a new home by Memorial Day.

“We’re allowed to keep the dumpster on Rehoboth Avenue until May 15, so we’re really hoping to have the renovations done by then,” said Loungin’ Lizzard owner Gwen Aboutboul during an interview April 16.

Aboutboul and her business partners purchased Loungin’ Lizzard 13 years ago. She said over the years, the store has gained a reputation for its outdoor shoe brands, clothing that reflects a beach-casual lifestyle, and a selection of accessories that can’t be found in other places.

“It’s always been a lifestyle store. It’s quality and comfort, with a sense of humor,” said Aboutboul, whose grandparents bought a house in Rehoboth Beach in the 1940s. She has been here since graduating from Virginia Tech in 1991. She has been involved with owning and operating a business downtown since 1993, when she was part of a group that bought into the Sunsations location on Rehoboth Avenue.

In some ways, Loungin’ Lizzard has been chameleon-like. Aboutboul said the store has changed over time, which has been a key to the business’ success. Initially, there was a big focus on hammocks because people couldn’t get those anywhere, she said.

“Then, after hammocks started being available at all the big-box stores, we grew away from them,” said Aboutboul. “We’ve done a good job letting go of ideas that weren’t working.”

For decades, Loungin’ Lizard was located at 138 Rehoboth Ave. Now, the store will be located across the street, at 161 Rehoboth Ave., in what was most recently Christmas Spirit.

Aboutboul said they had been eyeing the new Rehoboth Avenue location for a while. After they couldn’t reach an agreement on new lease terms for the existing location, she said, the decision was made to move forward with the purchase of the new space.

Aboutboul said the floor space in the new location is double the old space – from 2,500 square feet to 5,000 square feet – but the intention isn’t to make Loungin’ Lizzard that big. She said when the down-to-studs renovation is complete, there will be two storefronts.

“We decided, at least for the first season, that the whole space will be Loungin’ Lizzard, but it’s been designed to be cut in half,” she said. “It’s too big a location for Loungin’ Lizzard only.”

Aboutboul said the shell of the building is the only thing that will be kept. There’s a new facade, roof, siding, insulation, drywall and paint.

“Everything short of the steel beams,” she said.

Moving forward, Aboutboul said the company will be looking to expand its online presence. There have been several attempts over the years, she said, but there’s been such a focus on making the store work that online presence fell off the map. 

“Just keeping up with the volume of merchandise for the stores has taken all the manpower we had,” she said.

With the unknowns in today’s business environment, Aboutboul was hesitant to nail down specifics on store hours.

She said the best thing for customers to do is to monitor progress on the building when they are in town.

“It’s definitely scary,” she said. “But, like we’ve done in the past, we’ll make changes that we need to, and hopefully they’ll work.”