PARA Dollar opens in downtown Tamaqua
It’s true, the American dollar held more value at one point in time.
But at the new PARA Dollar store in downtown Tamaqua, that dollar is worth every penny.
Klingaman’s building was purchased in December by PARA Builders LLC, which is owned by Praveena Tayi. After a few months of decision making and renovations, Tayi and her husband, Dr. Ravi Tayi, opened PARA Dollar last Saturday on East Broad Street.
“We bought this building mainly as a construction rental,” Tayi said. “We have multiple properties in Tamaqua, Pottsville and Lansford. We bought this mainly to rent it, and also to see what happens. We have three apartments upstairs and all of them are fully renovated and rented. This was supposed to be fixed and rented, but she said she wanted to do something more. It was never even in our plans, but it seems to be good, we had a great reception from the community.”
The store is spacious, sleek and very clean. There is plenty of room to navigate and is wheelchair accessible. The name PARA stands for Praveena and Ravi, but also their children, Akash and Aneesh.
“It’s a beautiful property,” Tayi said. “It has a big basement for storage in the bottom and it’s right downtown. There’s a lot of foot traffic, so we decided to look into what businesses make sense in this area. The more we explored, the more it really looked like a dollar store. There are a lot of elderly folks that live here and also disabled people, and we were told that they would have to go all the way to Hometown or Lehighton for a dollar store.”
What exactly does PARA have? Pretty much anything you need — all for one dollar. Tayi’s store carries many everyday household items and necessities. He noted that jewelry and flip-flops have been two popular sellers this week. It’s also not a bad place to stop in if you’re hungry or thirsty.
“A lot of people don’t know we have coffee and things like that, because it’s not traditionally a dollar-store thing,” Tayi said. “Even our coffees are high-end coffees, not like a regular pot coffee. They come from all over the world, so we have different varieties and flavors. We have pretty much everything; anything you can think of. We have ice coffee, soda, coffee, cappuccino, hot dogs and slushies.”
Joey Navarro is the store manager. Go visit him during PARA’s hours of operation, which are 7 a.m.-7 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 9 a.m.-7 p.m. on Saturday, and 9 a.m.-5 p.m. on Sunday. Tayi said the hours may change in the future based on traffic and patterns.
“We look at it as an opportunity to kind of give back into the community,” Tayi said. “At least from feedback we received from people, they like the choices and options”