LOSS OF HARDWARE STORE CASTS SHADOW OVER TOWN

Empire fondly remembers a staple business
by Jacob Wheeler
Sun Editor

In the heart of Empire, a sleepy village where residents stand intent on preserving an historical aura, the old hardware store sits, abandoned, yet in full view of everyone on the main street. The store was closed down late last March by Wolohan Lumber Co., which bought the business from Empire local Fred Salisbury, Sr., in 1995.
Sales were down, and a shift in focus away from smaller hardware sales towards major building projects prompted Wolohan, a Saginaw-based company with shares on the Nasdaq stock exchange, to close the store started late in the 19th century by Lou Collins.
But local business owners worry that Empire’s downtown, the western base of M-72 — one of Northern Michigan’s major east-west highways, is dying. Only four year-round businesses remain: Deering’s Market, the Friendly Tavern, Tiffany’s Ice Cream & Cookies and the Empire National Bank. The village recently lost its doctor and pharmacy as well.
“There’s only four of us left,” said Phil Deering, owner of the grocery store run by his father Jack before him. “If one more goes, we’re in trouble. Everything will move out to the highway.”
Deering has resisted pressure to move his business onto M-22, the north-south highway which intersects M-72 at the village’s only stoplight. He favors preserving the downtown over added business exposure from cars traveling between Crystal Lake and the Glen Lakes.
Now Deering expects his sales to drop, deprived of the runoff business he picked up from customers who frequented the adjacent hardware store to buy a hammer, a pouch of nails or wood.
For simple tools or accessories, Northwood Home Center in nearby Glen Arbor saves customers a trip to Wolohan’s closest franchise, Home Builders Warehouse in Grawn, a 45-minute drive from Empire.
But as long as Empire looks at the uninhabited building in the heart of its downtown, the village will wallow in agony — because for the first two-thirds of the twentieth century, the building was much more than a hardware store; it was a community center.
When Chet Salisbury bought the then-36×50 foot store in 1940, half was devoted to selling horse hardware and agricultural products. The other half stocked groceries and dry goods. The business also included an ice house, which provided ice for the town’s residents in the summer. As a boy, Chet’s son Fred, who bought the store from his father in 1967, inherited the task of delivering ice.
“Only two houses in town had refrigerators at that time,” Fred recalled. “We would cut 150-pound ice sheets from South Bar Lake and haul them up to town with sleighs. In the summer we delivered to people’s homes.”
Fred also remembers his father’s store selling feed and bailed hay for chickens and cows. As the local farming industry subsided, the Salisbury business sold clothing, especially to Mexicans and Jamaicans who came to Leelanau County as migrant workers to pick cherries.
“Whole families of them would come in trucks, and live in big tents,” Fred recollected. “I learned enough Spanish to sell our products to them because many didn’t speak any English.”
The business’ focus shifted towards lumber after Fred and his wife Beatrice purchased it and acquired an Ace Hardware franchise.
“Fred turned it into a ‘super’ hardware store,” said Dave Taghon, owner of the gas station at the corner of M-72 and M-22. “He sold log homes complete with refrigerators.”
Taghon visited the community center often as a child to buy ice cream and play in the old saloon which had been converted into a toy room, offering puzzles, baseball bats and model airplanes to kids while their parents shopped for 2×4’s. Taghon admits he was moved to tears when he returned from Florida?? last spring to learn that the store which held so many childhood memories for him had been shut down.
The Salisburys also built Home Builders Warehouse in Grawn in 1994, before selling both stores to the Wolohan chain the following year.
And now the family’s shining achievement sits empty, locked up and collecting cobwebs.
“I feel terrible about the closing of the store,” Fred said. “I put work into it my whole life and it’s sad to see it closed down.”
Wolohan also closed down stores in Petoskey and Charlevoix — two other Northern Michigan towns which feed off the summer tourist boom — as corporations across the country move to consolidate their business into larger, all-purpose stores.
“Consolidation has taken place within our industry all over,” said Dave Honaman, chief financial officer at Wolohan. “We remain committed to looking for ways to cut costs. Ten years ago 60 percent of our business was retail, now 70 percent comes from builders and only 30 percent is retail.”
Wolohan’s stock share prices began falling in January and reached annual lows in June, but Honaman denies any connection between the stocks and the store closings.
“The profit in Empire was marginal,” he said. “Our key customer base is geared to people who are building homes or decks or remodeling kitchens. So the tourist boom doesn’t have much of an effect for us.”
Taghon believes that Wolohan’s store could have survived in Empire and made a profit if it only geared its business towards smaller projects.
“It went down by its own doing,” he said. “They didn’t have power tools and I needed a sand driver. They said ‘we can’t compete with Traverse City’. But they just needed one of every item on the shelf. People would have supported that store, and paid a few more dollars for the products, to avoid driving all the way to Traverse City.
“As a business person, you’re providing a service,” added Taghon, who keeps his gas station open until the evening, in the dead of winter. “You should feel obligated to provide services even in the off-season. If a guy comes in with a five-gallon gas tank, you serve him.”
Empire desperately needs a business occupying the old hardware store to preserve its downtown. Customers may dwindle, Deering fears, if the sight remains empty for long.
As for the existing owner’s role, Honaman said that Wolohan feels no sense of urgency to make a hasty move. The company announced a net income of $1.5 million in the second quarter of this year, and a few profits lost in Empire won’t turn any heads in Saginaw.
Tim Stein, the general manager of Home Builders Warehouse in Grawn and who is in charge of overseeing the Empire project, suggested that Wolohan might sell the building and property in lieu of ever reopening it.
“We are prone to sell it to another type of venture other than a hardware business,” he said. “Until then I will continue to maintain grounds. I won’t let it become an eye soar.”
The property in question is enormous, encompassing the hardware store itself, a wood barn behind it and parking lots on either side. If no venture were interested in purchasing all of it, a real estate agent would suggest dividing the property into smaller, cheaper lots.
But the Empire Village Council is a major roadblock to any major alterations downtown. Unlike Glen Arbor, which boasts a more business-friendly, development-oriented Township Board, the Empire Village Council grasps zoning ordinances written to the minute detail.
Regarding design requirements, section 4.4.5 of the Zoning ordinance, adopted on March 7, 1996 and amended six months later, states: “In order to protect and enhance the character of the village as largely established by the older buildings in the (Commercial-Residential district) it is hereby declared that retention and enhancement of the late 1800’s character of the structures on Front Street west of M-22 be perpetuated.”
The ordinance on Lot Division, section 3.4, could pose problems for any realtor intent on splicing Wolohan’s property into numerous different lots. Item 2 (c) states: “A lot in a recorded plat is not being divided into more than four parcels as a result of the proposed division.”
Furthermore, the zoning ordinances prevent numerous types of ventures, such as public assembly halls, funeral homes, pet shops, bus terminals or party stores, among others, from moving in on Front Street west of M-22.
These stringent regulations reflect the desire of Empire’s townsfolk to preserve the town which was once a major logging supplier on the Great Lakes.
********************
Wolohan was gracious enough to let Empire hold a farmers market on Saturdays last summer, in the parking lot south of the hardware building. But the idea was virtually a bust, said Chris Neiswonger, the township clerk, deputy clerk and treasurer for the Village of Empire.
“We could have done a better job of promoting it,” she said. “No public ever parked there and the market didn’t get much attention.”
Vendors estimated an average of only 50 customers per Saturday between 8-12 a.m., three dates of which were rained out. One woman bought $50 worth of produce in Traverse City and sold it in Empire at the same price, just so the market would have produce.
Overall, the farmers market was an act of wishful thinking, organized by concerned people trying to salvage an integral business in their town, but to no avail.