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Downtown Antiques, located at 109 N. Irwin St. around the town square in Manchester has a new owner with big plans for the antique mall.

Lynn Pope said she officially took possession of the business from the Foster family February 5, and she is hard at work organizing and improving the space.

“Everything will be changed,” Pope said. “By this time next year we will have approximately 450 to 500 vendor booths in here available.

Current plans include opening up the second floor of the building to accommodate even more vendor booths in the space.

One improvement that has already been made is a new point-of-sale-system that utilizes a phone app.

“They no longer have to write out tags,” Pope said. “They take their cellphone they go into the app and they put a little description, take a picture, price it and upload it to the inventory and it is in real time.”

Pope said the store’s vendors can even see what they have sold, and can be notified when a sale has taken place.

Prior to purchasing Downtown Antiques, Pope said she owned three antique stores on the Gulf Coast when the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020.

“Unfortunately, after not being able to work for three months we had to liquidate and shut them down,” she said.

Despite the setback, Pope said she is excited to be doing business in Manchester.

“I am just excited to be back in this business,” Pope said.

Pope said her original plan was to open an antique store in Winchester, but she thought she would see about setting up a booth at Downtown Antiques to sell some furniture in Manchester.

“So it went from there and I came in for a booth and ended up buying the business,” she said.

After spending years in the antiques business, Pope said she has seen some interesting trends come and go throughout the years, as different items become popular with different generations.

“I have seen a lot of what people would call junk turn into prized possessions,” she said. “Antiques is really like a revolving door. It is going to come back eventually.”

Pope said work is being done on the store one section at a time, and she hopes to have an official grand opening celebration in about eight weeks.

“To be an antique, truly you have to be 100 years old, so we are going to take our grand opening back to 1923,” she said.

Downtown Antiques is currently open 9 a.m. until 7 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 1-5 p.m. Sunday. For more information, visit Downtown Antiques on Facebook.