HUNTINGBURG — Wesselman’s Supermarket will close Saturday.
The economic slowdown was cited as the culprit, said Andy Riethmaier, Wesselman’s chief operating officer.
“We’ve been struggling with this for the past year. So it’s not anything that snuck up on us,” Riethmaier said Tuesday afternoon. “It simply wasn’t making any money.”
Wesselman’s has been operating in the building at U.S. 231 and 19th Street for the past two and a half years. Riethmaier said that although the store was struggling, he had confidence the situation would improve once the former St. Joseph’s Hospital reopened as a new medical facility. That was expected to happen earlier this year.
“The hospital has not come back on line,” Riethmaier said. “Our hope was to keep the store going until that happened. That simply would not be the case.”
The hospital project has been at a standstill while its new owners secure financing for needed renovations to the facility.
Houchens North Foods, which runs the Hometown IGA down the street from Wesselman’s, will buy the Wesselman’s building, Craig Knies, general manager for Houchens, said this morning. He did not say how the company will use the building.
“We are reviewing our plans for going forward with the property,” he said.
Houchens North Foods, based in Jasper, also runs the Hometown IGA store in Jasper. It is a division of Houchens Industries, the Bowling Green, Ky., company that purchased 22 area Buehler Foods stores in April 2008.
Wesselman’s is based in Evansville and its parent company is Dale-based Winkler Inc. Wesselman’s operates eight other stores in Evansville, Newburgh and Mount Vernon. The closing of the Huntingburg store, which opened May 19, 2009, will not affect the others, Riethmaier said.
It does, however, affect this community, as it is the second store at that location to close in recent history. Before Wesselman’s, Holiday Foods operated a grocery store there. When the store changed hands in 2009, the employees stayed on and retained their salaries and benefits.
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