Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, October 15, 1993 TAG: 9310150254
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SANDRA BROWN KELLY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Wednesday was spaghetti day.
Good spaghetti. Bad day.
That was the day Woolworth Corp. revealed plans to close 970 retail outlets, including half of its dime stores - which, it turned out Thursday, included the one that has been at 26 Campbell Ave. since 1903.
The Woolworth store at Towers Shopping Center was spared as the company stuck to the survival-of-the-fittest strategy it adopted in early 1992.
In addition to the 400 Woolworth stores closing, 330 Kinney or Footquarter stores will be affected either by closings or conversion to other company operations. Woolworth did not release any information on those plans Thursday.
Another 240 stores are being closed in Canada, but many will later reopen as another type of store.
The stores being closed lost $36 million during the first half of 1993, the company said. The company's 40 other chains include such names as Foot Locker, Lady Foot Locker, Northern Reflections, Champ Sports, Afterthoughts and Carimar.
The 17 workers at the downtown store got the word officially Thursday, along with the rest of the 10,000 U.S. employees and 3,000 Canadian employees, who will be out of work by Dec. 31.
The jobs, half of which are part-time, represent about 9 percent of Woolworth's total employment. Most of the stores closing are in downtowns where Woolworth had held out long after other mass retailers fled to suburban shopping malls and strip centers.
There were once five competing variety stores in downtown Roanoke. Woolworth will be the last to shut.
"There's nowhere else downtown for me to go," said Jean Moore, food manager at the Campbell Avenue store.
This is her third store. She worked at McLelland. It closed, and she went to Kress. Kress shut in 1979, and she joined Woolworth.
On Thursday, Moore served lunch at noon as usual to store manager David Brewer and his lunch buddies, Craig Hawkins and Jan Bruce.
They've eaten together for five years, speculating about important things like winning the lottery and buying a boat to go see the Panama Canal.
They sit at a booth by the big windows overlooking Campbell Avenue, so they can "watch the world go by," said Bruce, who is with the city Engineering Department.
Hawkins, administrator at Gentry Locke Rakes & Moore, said the day a young woman jogged by in fluorescent green shorts is "embedded in my mind."
Thursday there was only the woman dressed as a Bedouin, and the regular mix of downtown office workers, retirees who ride buses to the station across the street and walk-ins from inner-city residential areas.
Just Middle America, like the crowd Frank W. Woolworth wanted to serve when he started the business in 1879.
"This is all there is down here to eat and shop at," said Tommy Davis. He had finished his lunch of meatloaf with a side dish of macaroni and was headed for the bus station.
Davis said he has a car, but in the 15 years since he moved to Roanoke from Washington, he has enjoyed coming downtown to Woolworth.
"It's home," said Moore.
From the time the place opens for breakfast at 7:30 a.m. until the end of the day, the staff and customers exchange the kind of information that binds their lives: One customer asked why another regular was late for lunch.
"He's getting a haircut today," Moore replied.
Thursday was a little slow, Moore said. The weather was pleasant "so people want to walk," she said.
The store is busiest at the first of each month when public assistance checks arrive, Brewer said. Business almost doubles then.
He said business dropped off in the past three years though, affected by retirements at Norfolk Southern Corp. and uncertainty in the banking community.
The customer base began to disappear, Brewer said. The employee makeup also changed, he said. Few long-time employees remain.
The store's manager said he doesn't have details about the closing. He's not sure if any new stock will be sent or even if the store will definitely be open through Dec. 31, as he heard, or Jan. 31, as a temporary worker at the New York offices said, or just until all the merchandise is sold.
He said he was told that managers of the stores being closed will be interviewed in 30 days, but he's not sure why or for what jobs.
Working for Woolworth is the only regular job Brewer has ever had. He joined the company 22 years ago right out of Guilford College in Greensboro, N.C., and came to Roanoke in 1976.
"I'm going to be positive until the day we lock the doors," he said as Halloween pumpkin lights twinkled in the background and yule music poured from the musical tree ornaments on display.
But after he finished eating lunch, and his friends were gone, Brewer sat in the booth alone and said: "I'm lost. I don't know what to do."
by CNB