A popular store for buying sports-related apparel, shoes, sunglasses and other items is celebrating a milestone this year. Sport Shack, located at Hayes, has been in business in the county for 30 years.

The owner Paul Conese said the store was a “brainstorm” of his father, the late Frank Conese. “Dad wanted to buy a basketball in Gloucester and couldn’t find one anywhere. He wanted to start a store and see if I would help.”

Paul, an architect from New York, said the need for his profession dwindled in the late 1980s, so he decided to move to Virginia to help his parents run the business.

The first Sport Shack opened in 1989 in the York River Crossing Shopping Center. In 1995, the store moved into its own building on Route 17 across from the Hayes Shopping Center. 

Over the past three decades, Conese said the world has changed and the products on his shelves have changed. “You’ve got to keep re-inventing yourself,” he said. &ldquo...