Lebanon
At 2 p.m. on a recent Thursday there was one customer in the store — buying lottery tickets.
A pall of sorts appears to have settled over The Lebanon Village Marketplace, the neighborhood grocery store near Colburn Park whose central location has been a lifeline for residents of senior residence Rogers House and a convenient market for people who don’t want to drive to Route 12A.
And shoppers have noticed and are wondering what it means for the store’s future.
“They don’t appear to be replenishing the shelves as much,” said David Muzzy, a retiree who lives on Mechanic Street and walks to Lebanon Village Marketplace “four or five” times a week to buy groceries and things he needs. “When it opened it seemed cheerier.”
It’s an observation that is increasingly being noted about the downtown market which was brought back to life in 2005 after being dormant for two years. The closing of what had been known as Butson’s led to a long scramble by Lebanon city officials to lure a new operator to the space before two Upper Valleys residents reopened the midsize grocery as Lebanon Village Marketplace.
The Upper Valley (VT/NH) Facebook page lit up recently after a member posted about how bare the shelves of the market appear and publicly asked if anyone knew what is happening. The question sparked a flood of comments from people expressing both support and criticism of the store — much of it laced with rumors and speculation — although no one had definitive answers.
Besides the bare shelf spaces, customers noted that last month the store began closing an hour earlier, at 7 p.m., and it stopped distributing its weekly circular announcing specials.
Ritchard Bill, now the sole owner of Lebanon Village Marketplace, declined to comment on the record last week about the status of the store.
Small, locally-owned stores in the Upper Valley have been closing with greater frequency in recent years, beaten down by a combination of consumers shifting to the internet and being unable to compete with lower prices offered at the big box stores along Route 12A in West Lebanon. This is even more the case in the brutally competitive grocery business, where Hannaford, Price Chopper and Shaw’s all are located in the same mile in West Lebanon and another Price Chopper is located on Miracle Mile.
For residents centrally located in Lebanon and among those for whom transportation is a challenge, the Lebanon Village Marketplace has been a handy neighborhood store, something less than a supermarket but more than a convenience mart, where a person could always find the basics of any grocery and food list as well as ordinary household supplies.
The market has long been a valuable resource for the senior residents of Rogers House, a public housing apartment complex across the opposite side of Coburn Park. Many Rogers House residents have mobility issues and can’t venture far from their home.
On a recent Friday afternoon, Maurice Place, 92, came riding up the ramp at the entrance of Rogers House on an electric red scooter that belongs to his friend and fellow resident Amos Hoyt and which Place had been taking out for a test spin.
Place said he goes the market across the park every Wednesday to stock up on “milk and bottles of ginger ale, stuff you really need.”
The World War II Navy veteran — Place was wearing a USS Windsor cap — said he relies upon Lebanon Village Marketplace because “I don’t drive anymore and I’m not going to be asking my kids to take me” to the supermarkets in West Lebanon.
His friend, Amos Hoyt, 87, who has lived in Rogers House for 12 years and was sitting in a chair under the front balcony, said whenever someone is heading out to Lebanon Village Marketplace to pick something up they always ask fellow residents if there is anything they can get for them.
“It would be a tremendous loss for this building” if the market ever closed, Hoyt said.
Kimberly Nedeau, a front desk manager at the Baymont Hotel in West Lebanon and her husband, Albert Nedeau Jr., a line cook at Salthill Pub in Lebanon, live near the Dairy Twirl on Mechanic Street and said they have become regular shoppers at Lebanon Village Marketplace since they moved to the city four months ago from Concord.
“We usually get our meats there,” Kimberly Nedeau said. “I don’t shop for meat anywhere else because it’s too expensive.”
And she notes that Lebanon Village Marketplace’s cheeseburgers cost only $1.29 and are better quality than the paper-wrapped patties served by a fast-food restaurant.
“They wrap them in tin foil and have all the condiments set out right there,” she said.
Several customers walking out of Lebanon Village Marketplace said in fact it was the value and quality of the market’s meat prices that brought them to shop there.
“I come here all to the time to get bulk hamburger here every Thursday. They have the best price anywhere. It’s wonderful,” said Katera Rowe, of Hartland, holding up a plastic bag containing four pounds of ground beef she bought for $12. “I go to Shaw’s for everything else.”
Ruth Emery, who lives around the corner on Church Street and shops at Lebanon Village Marketplace several times a week, concurred that “a lot of people like the meat section. My husband is always telling me he’d rather walk up and get the meat there than anywhere else because it’s better quality.”
Emery said that when she noticed how the market was no longer restocking certain items she asked the owner what was happening. “He blamed some on the construction on Mechanic Street,” which has made it a hassle for residents approaching from the north side of the city.
“He also said people are just using (the store) to buy beer and cigarettes, which makes it difficult,” Emery explained.
Emery was active in promoting the return of a market after Butson’s closed in 2003 and remembers participating at rallies in Colburn Park with “people walking around with signs.
“We had all this stuff going on. The city council got involved. We had meetings. There was talk of maybe getting a block grant and different things that could maybe help get a store,” she said. “But in the end Ritch Bill stepped up.”
David Pardoe, who lives on Spring Street in Lebanon, said he swings by the market as many as four-times per week on his way home from work in the inventory and logistics department at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center.
“Usually we hit the big stores on the weekend,” he said of shopping excursions he makes with his wife, Wendy Pardoe. “But during the week we go there to grab something to make for dinner or get coffee creamer, orange juice and milk, stuff like that.”
“It’s like a home away from home. We should have our own parking space,” he said.
Pardoe noticed the chatter about the fate of the market on the Upper Valley Facebook page last week and was distressed to read the disparaging comments some people wrote.
Such negative remarks ignore Lebanon Village Marketplace’s role in the community, he said.
“For those people who don’t drive it would be a real inconvenience if it closed,” Pardoe said. “It would mean taking the bus to get to one of the other markets, and getting on and off carrying groceries. That would hurt.”
Both Muzzy and Emery said that if city residents want Lebanon Village Marketplace to remain open then it is important community members support the store by shopping there.
“If you want the store, you got to go there,” Emery said she tells people. “I think Ritch has struggled all along — but not to this degree — and he’s been a real champion of the town for trying to keep it open.”
John Lippman can be reached at jlippman@vnews.com.
