Jan DeMunnik, Fresh Seasons general manager, spoke with The Chronicle in early October about the planned move. Reached on Friday at the store, she said that at the time she couldn’t disclose the pending sale of the business. Lynda and Ben Stahl, who’ve owned Fresh Seasons for 15 years, were working on a deal to sell the grocery, she said, and the new owners had planned to relocate it. That deal fell through, however.

DeMunnik did not disclose the name of the potential buyer, or provide details about why the sale was called off.

The building at 2281 W. Liberty is owned by Gary Coleman, who sold the grocery business to the Stahls in the mid-1990s. When the Stahls decided not to renew their lease because of the pending sale, Coleman’s real estate broker – Jim Chaconas of Collier’s International – started advertising for a new tenant, which caused customers to inquire about the future of the market, DeMunnik said earlier this month. One Chronicle reader observed at the time that the store seemed in distress.

On Friday, DeMunnik said that their lease has ended but that they’re now paying a higher rate to stay until they can liquidate inventory. With items discounted 20% – including meat, produce and wine – they expect to be ready to close within two weeks.

The business employs about 15 people. DeMunnik said she doesn’t yet know what she’ll do after helping close the business. But she does know that she’ll miss the people she works with and the regulars who shop at the store.

“Our customers are like friends to us,” DeMunnik said. “That part is sad.”

Vendors are also scrambling to adjust. Jeff Renner has been delivering his “Best French Bread in Town” to Fresh Seasons since soon after the store opened. He told The Chronicle that he’s made arrangements to sell his bread at Arbor Farms, located around the corner from Fresh Seasons at 2103 W Stadium Blvd. Arbor Farms will start carrying the bread on Friday, Oct. 30, with deliveries Tuesdays through Fridays.

Sign at Fresh Seasons Market on West Liberty. (Photo by the writer.)

It’s hard to keep something under wraps when your landlord’s real estate agent puts a “For Lease” ad on the front page of the local newspaper. That ad ran last Thursday to solicit a new tenant for the building at 2281 W. Liberty, where Fresh Seasons Market has been located for about 20 years. And it prompted the grocery’s customers to ask: What’s up?

“We’re not signed, sealed and delivered yet,” said Fresh Seasons general manager Jan DeMunnik, referring to their new, undisclosed location, which she characterized as “very close” to the current store. They hadn’t planned to announce the move just yet, she said, but the real estate advertisement forced their hand.

Since then they’ve put a notice about the move on the sign outside their business, and are passing out flyers to customers that explain the situation – and to make sure people know that they are not closing.

Ben and Lynda Stahl bought the business 15 years ago from Gary Coleman, who still owns the building but lives out of state. They’ve been on a renewable five-year lease, which ends later this year. That made it a good time to look around for alternative space, DeMunnik said. Because of the economy, there are a lot of empty buildings and good deals, she explained.

They found a location with lower rent and in better condition, DeMunnik said. The space will allow them to keep their outdoor area as well – the market has a large garden section, selling annuals and perennials in season, and Christmas trees during November and December.

The Chronicle asked DeMunnik whether the new location might be the former CVS store about a block away, just east of Stadium on Liberty. That store has been empty since early 2008, when CVS moved to its new building at 2100 W. Stadium Blvd. The former Arbor Farms store, just north of Liberty on West Stadium Boulevard, is also vacant. So is the one-story commercial building at Liberty and First, next to Liberty Lofts condos. Earlier this year, that building was being looked at for a possible European-style indoor farmers market.

DeMunnik said she couldn’t comment on any speculation about the store’s future location. She said they’ll inform customers as soon as they can, saying it was difficult to know how soon that would be. They hope to move after the holidays, which is traditionally a slow time for the store, she said. But that depends on how things come together with the new landlord.

Because they were forced to reveal their plans to move, DeMunnik says they’re now using it as an opportunity to get feedback from customers about what changes they should make at the new location. Feedback forms haven’t yielded any concrete suggestions so far, she said, other than customers urging them to stay open – which they are.

“We won’t be any different,” DeMunnik said. “We just might look a little different.”

Jim Chaconas, an agent with Colliers International, is representing Coleman in trying to lease or possibly sell the 8,100-square-foot building where Fresh Seasons is now located. The building, on 1.5 acres, is listed for sale at $1.2 million. According to city records, the property’s state equalized value (SEV) is $591,900. Typically, market value is roughly double a property’s SEV.

The lease rate will depend on what changes prospective tenants want to make to the building, Chaconas said, but would likely be in the $12-$15 per-square-foot range, triple net (meaning that the tenant would also pay for taxes, insurance and maintenance).

The property is zoned C2B, or a “business service district.” From the city’s description of C2B zoning:

This district is designed to provide for certain types of commercial activities which have functional and economic relationships to a central business or fringe commercial district. Such activities will include wholesale suppliers, retail and supply warehouses, motor vehicle major repair and service agencies, carports and other parking establishments, equipment and machinery dealers, building materials dealers, food processing plants, farm and garden supply stores, places of entertainment or recreation, public utility facilities and retail establishments related in a peripheral manner to those of the Central Business District.

In this district the customer may come to the particular establishments either by automobile or as an extension of the CBD (Central Business District) pedestrian shopping activity. Since there is little essential interdependence of activities, each establishment can have its own automobile parking area. Good traffic accessibility is essential to this district, particularly for trucks and other freight carriers. The uses permitted, because of their required contact with auto and truck traffic, would be incompatible in the Central Business District.

Chaconas said the zoning allowed for great flexibility: “I can sell cars. I can sell fruit. I can put a restaurant there, if I want to.”

One prospective tenant is interested in putting another market in that spot, he said. Others who’ve expressed interest haven’t indicated how they’d use the building.

Bello Vino at the Plymouth Mall, near Plymouth and Nixon.

On Saturday, TeacherPatti posted a Tweet about the upcoming closing of Bello Vino Marketplace, and on Monday The Chronicle took the #2 AATA bus to the Plymouth Mall store to check things out. If you didn’t already know the grocery was set to close on Jan. 15, the empty or thinly-stocked shelves would be your first clue. Or you might notice the grim-faced employees – one of them told The Chronicle that they were informed of the decision on Friday, the day after Christmas. “It was kind of a slap in the face,” she said.

There’s a sign on the entrance, and letters to customers are getting passed out at the checkout stands. (The same message was posted on their website on Monday – the full text is at the end of this article). The owners attribute the store’s closing to current economic conditions. They are looking for a different space to continue selling wine and beer, but they haven’t yet found a new location.

A sign on the entrance to Bello Vino announced its closing date and deep discounts.

Meanwhile, Bello Vino’s remaining stock is deeply discounted – 50% for produce and cheese, 25% off meat and seafood, 40% off coffee and candy. On Monday morning, there was still a decent selection of beer, wine, meat and dairy, but the produce section was nearly depleted. It didn’t appear that anything was being restocked throughout the store.

Lou Ferris opened Bello Vino in the space formerly occupied by Merchant of Vino, which was bought by Whole Foods in 1997 and moved out of the Plymouth Mall in late 2002. He owns a farm in Superior Township, which at one point supplied up to 30 percent of Bello Vino’s produce, according to a 2007 Ann Arbor News article.

Two years ago, Ferris spoke at a planning commission public hearing and told the group that he’d invested heavily in the store but that it basically just broke even, according to planning commission minutes. That was true until this past year, when the downturn in the economy really took its toll, said Jennifer Ferris, vice president of the holding company Federated Capital Corp., through which her father owns Bello Vino and several other businesses.

(As an aside, Federated Capital Corp. also owns Great Lakes Central Railroad. That railroad operates trains on the state-owned tracks that run from Ann Arbor through Howell. Ferris has been working with the city of Ann Arbor to push for a north/south commuter rail service. In mid-2006 he hosted a group of community leaders on a train ride from Ann Arbor to Eight Mile Road in Northfield Township, to demonstrate the feasibility of the route. That project is still moving forward, Jennifer Ferris said. “We have a very big interest in commuter rail.”)

The decision to close Bello Vino was “very, very hard,” Jennifer Ferris said. The cost of food is rising, customers have been cutting back on their food budgets, and the market was over-saturated with grocery stores, she said, though she didn’t single out any one specific competitor. In Ann Arbor, Whole Foods opened a second store this fall at the corner of Ann Arbor-Saline and Eisenhower, and in February Plum Market opened its first store locally at the corner of Maple and Dexter-Ann Arbor. Both specialty groceries are direct competitors with Bello Vino.

Plymouth Mall is owned by Vern Hutton. Jeff Hutton, the mall’s property manager, says they’re pursuing another grocery store, but are in the very preliminary stages. Before Bello Vino’s decision to leave, the mall had a vacancy rate of less than 10%, he said. The biggest previous vacancies were caused by the departure this summer of the Ann Arbor District Library, which left after opening the nearby Traverwood branch, and Norton’s Flowers & Gifts. Those spots are still empty.

It’s a tough time to find a new tenant, Hutton said. In general, the economy has been hard on existing tenants, who’ve struggled for two years since the announced departure of Pfizer – the pharmaceutical’s large research campus is located across the street from Plymouth Mall. The University of Michigan recently announced plans to purchase the Pfizer site, but that deal isn’t expected to close until the summer of 2009.

Finally, as promised, here’s the text of a letter that Bello Vino is distributing to customers:

Dear friends,

With deep sadness, we regret to inform you that we will be shutting our doors on January 15. Five years ago this January, we opened with a dream and a hope of providing the freshest gourmet food to our community. It has been a remarkable journey as we have come to know the people and local businesses of Ann Arbor. Through our relationships with our customers and farmers, we have stayed passionate about local, sustainable, unique and delicious foods.

We are currently in the process of seeking a space to continue our Wine and Beer Departments. You will surely be aware if we are successful in that endeavor.

For the past year we have tried various strategies to make it through the current economic downturn. The decision to close our store was not an easy one. We understand the impact it will have on our distributors, local growers, employees and customers.

Thank you for your patronage, support and friendly faces that we have come to recognize and know throughout the last five years. It is our hope to return to the food community of Ann Arbor in the future.

Until then, thank you for your support and patronage.

Sincerely,

The Staff and Family of Bello Vino Marketplace