Not exactly a move, but the Village Market (next to BIT) will be closing on March 8th ... with plans to reopen in June. Apparently, there was a change in ownership and they're going to do a remodel. While completing construction projects can be nebulous, my strong suspicion is they'll definitely want to finish up prior to Bluegrass & will probably throw heaps of cash at it in order to insure it ... since they probably make a huge chunk of revenue during that period.
http://www.telluridenews.com/articles/2015/02/13/news/doc54dd43bb3c93e780172787.txtVillage Market to close March 8
New grocery store will open in June
By Stephen Elliott
Staff Reporter
Published: Friday, February 13, 2015 6:05 AM CST
The Village Market on the corner of Fir Street and Pacific Avenue is set to close March 8, undergo $1 million in renovations and reopen in June under the new management of Darin Hill, who also operates the Mountain Village Market and Mountain Market in Ridgway.
The closing price on the property was $3.1 million according to county records, and the new owner is an investment group out of Texas called Bridal Veil Investments. Their broker, Erik Fallenius, said the group had a long-term involvement in Telluride since the early ‘80s.
“We wanted to continue to operate the store. We wanted to continue being a part of the community in Telluride that we spent 30 years building,” said John Buxman, Jr., whose dad John Buxman, Sr. opened the Village Market in 1985 and owns other grocery stores in Aspen and Moab.
“It’s really been a privilege to be in this community,” Buxman said. “More than anything we would like to stay there and continue to serve the Telluride community. We feel really bad that we can’t continue to do that.”
* Buxman said the store has been in a kind of limbo for the last couple years as the Zoline family sold the property and they were never sure how much longer the Village Market could stay open. The Buxmans were offered the opportunity to buy the property, and they put in a bid.
“We’re not the type of people who can pay millions of dollars for a grocery store site,” Buxman said. “Since we couldn’t afford to buy the building, we were then at the mercy of whoever did buy it.”
“We thought after 30 years of operating the store and our commitment to the town and our track record there that they would like to continue to have us there, but apparently not,” Buxman added.
Buxman said the operators of Village Market pride themselves on serving the needs of the community year-round rather than in cycles based on fluctuations in visitor numbers.
“We hope that whoever does take that store over, their first consideration is the local population and how they operate the store when the town is not full of tourists,” Buxman said.
Neither Hill nor his broker Michael Ward could be reached for comment, but Fallenius said the new owners took care in making the decision to bring the Mountain Village Market operator in as the new tenant instead of retaining the Buxmans.
“[Bridal Veil Investments] went through a very lengthy process of working with the Buxmans and Darin Hill and the reality is that when all was said and done, Darin Hill brought a better overall package to the table,” Fallenius said. “We think he’s a great grocer.”
Hill will be putting around $1 million in renovations into the current Village Market building, which will be closed from the first week in March until June.
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