Last-Ditch Effort to Save Town Business Falls Short

By Ruth Melville
On his last day of business, Corner Store owner Fadhl Saleh is visibly upset as he looks around at the empty shelves of his store. “I tried, but it just didn’t work,” he says sadly. “In the end, the stress was terrible, unbearable.”

Saleh, who lives in New Britain, has worked most of his life as a cook in a restaurant. The Corner Store was his first attempt at trying to run his own business. But a combination of retail inexperience, the lack of an adequate business plan, and insufficient capital proved too much of an obstacle to for him overcome, no matter how much effort he put in.

After articles in Norfolk Now last spring publicized the problems at the store, concerned Norfolk residents had discussions about what could be done to help. Kate Wilcox, who has years of experience working in convenience stores, came in to try to help Saleh turn the store’s fortunes around. Together they made the store cleaner and more open, ridding the shelves of old merchandise and bringing in new. “We were trying to work the debt down,” she says, “but by that time it was just too high.” She adds that, unfortunately, even the additional support from the town was not enough. “People thought they were helping by coming in to buy a newspaper every day, but really, the profit from the sale of a paper is just a couple of pennies.”

Keith Harvill, who ran the pharmacy at the Corner Store from 1985 to 2004, points out how much the retail market in town has changed since then. Thanks in large part to the Internet, newspaper sales have fallen off, video rentals are a thing of the past, and people now buy other basic goods that the store carried, such as stationery, online. In his day, the grocery section did well, and he thinks that could be true today, and that a well-run deli would draw customers.

With the closing of the Corner Store, Norfolk residents will have at least a half-hour round-trip to get a newspaper or a quart of milk. The worry for businesses in town is that drivers will just keep on going, and do the rest of their shopping in Winsted, Canaan or even Great Barrington.

Kathy Williams, co-owner of the Artisans Guild shop on Station Place, says that a certain volume of people traffic in town is needed to keep stores like hers and Aija thriving. “We normally open at 10 on Wednesdays, but town is now very very quiet on mornings in the middle of the week. We may need to reassess our hours, and be open more in the evenings, when Infinity Hall and the Wood Creek Grill help bring people to town.”

As for Saleh, heís going back to restaurant work, trying to put his life and his finances back on track. “At least with the store closed I’ll be able to get more hours at the restaurant and start to earn back some money.”

The windows at the Corner Store are now dark. The owner of the building, Martha Pallone, has put the building up for sale, and at this time there are no plans for its future use.

Photo by Shelley Harms.