DENVER (AP) – Residents of three Eastern Plains towns where a financially troubled grocery chain closed the only supermarkets are planning for a future without the Bella’s Markets, despite the owner’s claim they will reopen.
Bella’s Market, owned by Samuel Mancini, closed stores in Akron, Wiggins and Walden this week.
But many shelves at the markets had gone unstocked for months and more before they closed.
“What surprised me was that the stores did remain open. There was nothing for the employees to do; there was no product to sell or stock,” said Annette Bowin, Akron town clerk.
Mancini’s stores in five other small Colorado towns remain open, though officials in all but one of them told The Denver Post last week that they, too, are poorly stocked.
Mancini, who didn’t return a call for comment, said in an email Tuesday to 7News the closings would be temporary.
Officials in the towns, accustomed to unfulfilled promises to resupply the stores, are skeptical that he will reopen.
“It’s questionable because we heard that kind of story before with him,” said Jim Musgrave, Wiggins town administrator.
In both Akron and Wiggins, people are hoping that Leroy Odell, the former owner who sold the markets to Mancini in 2006, will take over the businesses.
John O’Brian, a lawyer for Odell, said he couldn’t comment on the possibility.
Even before last week’s closures, the town of Haxtun, where another Bella’s is located and remains open, was studying the possibility of forming a grocery cooperative like one that exists in Walsh, said Mark Oman, who chairs that committee.
Officials in Akron and Wiggins are also considering a grocery cooperative.
When the only grocery store in Walsh, a tiny town in Baca County, closed in 2007, residents voted to reopen the store as a cooperative, according to the county’s website.
More than 300 people pooled money, formed a board, issued 6,000 shares of stock at $50 each and got a loan to start the Walsh Community Grocery Store.
“The store had $1 million in gross sales the first year and continues to be in the black,” the website said.
So far, there has been no discussion of starting a co-op in Walden, said the town’s mayor, Kyle Fliniau.
Even before Bella’s closed, a big-game market had expanded to sell beef and other meat, Fliniau said.
“Also a gal has opened a produce shop on Main Street,” he said.
The shelves at Bella’s had been bare for quite a while before the store closed.
“I think the community has already moved on. We are open to any idea that might be out there, but right now with the entrepreneur spirit, we are going to let that play out,” Fliniau said.
