Presque Isle grocery store closes Smythe’s IGA Plus inventory, some employees will go to Shop ‘n Save

PRESQUE ISLE – Bob Buckley stood outside his former store Tuesday afternoon, waving to old customers and giving hugs to employees who came to say goodbye.

“I sure hate to see her go,” one man said of the store after driving up to pay Buckley his respects. “I’ve been shopping here since ’93.”

“And you’ve been a real good customer to us,” Buckley said, as he shook the man’s hand.

Buckley said there has been a stream of visitors and phone calls ever since last Friday, when Smythe’s IGA Plus closed its doors for good. The Presque Isle grocery store did about $12 million in gross sales last year and employed 76 full-time and part-time workers. Buckley has owned the business, located on North Street, for six years. He has been with the store since it opened in 1980 under the original owner, Bill Smythe. Buckley became the store manager in the mid-1980s and purchased the store from Smythe in 2001.

Buckley said he had worked out a deal with the owners of Graves Shop ‘n Save supermarket of Presque Isle to purchase the store’s inventory and offer jobs to half of his employees. Buckley said that about 95 percent of his full-time employees have found new jobs. No severance packages are being offered, though employees were compensated for unused vacation time.

Buckley said the closing had a lot to do with rising electricity costs and the fact that Presque Isle is “overstored” – for years, the city’s population of 9,500 has had five grocery stores to chose from, three of them more than 50,000 square feet. But the biggest factor involved the store’s lease.

Smythe’s IGA is located in a 51,000-square-foot leased space in the North Plaza Shopping Center on North Street. Last year, R&L Real Estate LLC – formed by principals Robert and Gregory Graves, who own and operate Graves Shop ‘n Save – bought the strip mall from a Massachusetts company for $4.1 million. At the time, Robert Graves said the company did not invest in the close-to-home property with any specific goals and did not have plans for the competing grocery store.

Buckley said the lease Smythe’s has with R&L runs out in 2012. He said he found out two weeks ago that the primary leaseholder for Smythe’s IGA – C&S Wholesale Grocers of Keene, N.H. – had chosen to let the lease run out. Buckley said that left his business, which sublet from C&S, with two choices: try to sell the store in 2012 or close down now.

“My concern was that in 2012, what is going to be our option? What are we going to have to negotiate with?” he said. “I wouldn’t have had a whole lot to negotiate with.”

So he approached the Graveses and struck a deal on the inventory and the jobs. Smythe’s employees learned about the closing last Friday when they came to work or by phone.

Buckley said that he and others conducted an inventory Thursday night that lasted until early Friday morning and that officials began telling employees about the store closing as soon as they knew they had the inventory to secure the deal with the Graveses. That deal was signed late last Friday.

On Tuesday afternoon, the store was empty except for Buckley and his family, who are seeing to closing details, and some of the workers who were moving the inventory. Buckley said it is tough closing after so many years with the store, which has become a second family to his family, but that he’s glad many of his employees have found work elsewhere. He commended the Graveses for working with his family as they closed the store.

“That was the toughest part,” Buckley said of letting the employees go. “But that was the part Bob Graves made the easiest.”

The closing leaves four grocery stores in Presque Isle.