Pat’s Endangered Species, located at 11 West Winter Street, is a record store that opened in downtown Delaware in 1980 and has expanded since. They claim to be the last record store on Earth. 

At the age of 23, Patrick Bailey opened the store to share his love for records and music. “We’re the oldest and longest running retail business in downtown,” Bailey said. 

Bailey, from central Ohio, has run the store for more than 35 years and has seen downtown change.

“Downtown Delaware has evolved … it’s not so much retail oriented anymore. There’s an expensive food and drink situation now. It used to be a lot of cool stores and a few restaurants, and now it’s the exact opposite,” he said. 

His store, he said, is doing great, with customers coming in from neighboring places including Columbus, Marion and Marysville. However unlike in the past, the store does not get much business from Ohio Wesleyan students. 

“We have literally next to zero Ohio Wesleyan students come in to this store. Most of them don’t even know we’re here. Back in the day, we planned our vacations around Ohio Wesleyan … now we don’t even when students are on campus,” said Bailey. 

There is disconnect between the downtown Delaware community and Ohio Wesleyan, he said. 

First Friday activities, according to Bailey, do not have much impact on downtown.  “A lot of the First Friday activities is literally fundraising for the Main Street committee, and it has nothing to do with downtown … Downtown is a stage to make money for themselves [Main street] … It has to do with filling their coffers, which means blocking off the streets that we pay taxes on. They take away parking from our customers,” he said.

He hopes downtown survives and thrives in the coming future.

“Right now downtown is controlled by some serious big money people who want downtown to be like Short North Columbus, which is an expensive place … I hope downtown lasts. I want to have a 50th anniversary for my store.”