North Springfield Market abruptly closed

The store, located on Main Street in the center of the village, closed, and North Springfield residents can’t understand why.

http://www.rutlandherald.com/article/20110422/NEWS02/704229933

Published April 22, 2011 in the Rutland Herald

North Springfield Market abruptly closed

By SUSAN SMALLHEER

NORTH SPRINGFIELD — For 10 years, Brian Szad and Lois Patrie ran the Main Street Market, a local neighborhood store where you could get a great sandwich, a cup of coffee and the latest news. Oh, and great pie.

That all came to an abrupt end late last month, when the store owners posted a sign announcing the store would be closing in the next couple of days.

The store, located on Main Street in the center of the village, closed, and North Springfield residents can’t understand why.

Francine Provost lives directly across the street from the store and said she saw every indication of a thriving business.

“Why? Everybody’s baffled. There was no word, no official word. People are still coming and attempting to get in,” said Provost, who is head of the local effort to turn the village’s now vacant elementary school, the North School, into a community center.

“The store seemed to be doing such a great booming business,” she said. “It was busy from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m., people were coming and going at all hours.”

Provost said the store was particularly busy at lunchtime, when workers from the businesses in the nearby North Springfield Industrial Park, came to the store to buy some lunch.

Szad and Patrie, neither of whom have listed telephone numbers, couldn’t be reached for comment on the store closing.

A store has been at that location off and on for more than 100 years, according to earlier news accounts.

At town hall, there were no filings to give a clue of the future of the store.

Szad and Patrie had transferred ownership of the store to a new corporation they formed last summer, TwoBluebirds LLC., a registered Vermont corporation.

Szad and Patrie have been involved in a long legal fight to reopen the Perkinsville General Store in Weathersfield.

The case has been up to the Vermont Environmental Court and back, as neighbors Peter and Susan Korbet successfully fought a new store on the grounds of traffic and parking problems.

At one point, Szad was living at the Perkinsville location.

Plans for another family to run the Perkinsville Store, with Szad’s ownership, are pending before the Environmental Court, on another appeal by the Korbets.

Town Manager Robert Forguites, himself a North Springfield resident, said the store was popular with residents, and he said he stopped there every morning for a cup of coffee.

“I hope it’s not going to have a bad impact on our project. My impression is the village has become very much quiet and sapped of a lot of the vitality,” she said.

“It does seem more like a ghost town,” she said. “It was such a boon to our village. It’s a blow.”