South Side's Schwartz Market to close
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Schwartz Market on East Carson Street, owned for a long time by Marty and Audrey Dorfner and Richard and Donna Stanton, is closing by the end of the week. -
Marcia Vitai has worked the deli counter at Schwartz Market since 1998. -
Marty and Audrey Dorfner, pictured, along with and Richard and Donna Stanton, bought the market 25 years ago.
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After 83 years on the South Side, Schwartz Market will close at the end of the week. Its four owners, having failed to find a suitable buyer, will leave the building to a transition team that includes Elisa Beck, one of the property owners.
She said Wednesday the doors will reopen with the shortest delay possible for community discussions about the building's next life as a sustainable enterprise that will eventually include a market.
Ms. Beck, a developmental optometrist whose family opened the store, said the transition will not be fast, "but it's happening now. We are frontloading it with a planning process." She established a nonprofit, Unity Through Creativity, to begin raising money to change the building in phases.
The current business owners -- Marty and Audrey Dorfner and Richard and Donna Stanton -- bought the store, at 1317 E. Carson St., 25 years ago.
"We would rather have sold the business intact," said Mr. Dorfner, "but no prospective buyer has been able to work out a lease, and the ones who could didn't have the money for the business."
The asking price of $75,000 dropped to $39,000 two months ago, he said.
A dairy case that eight years ago cost $1,000, with another $5,000 spent moving it, installing it and adding a compressor, will sell at auction at a loss if it sells, he said, "because there aren't many small stores like this left."
The owners will continue to stock fresh meat, produce and dairy products but are letting their non-perishable items deplete with 25 percent reductions in price. The closing date isn't definite, he said. "March 5 or shortly thereafter, depending on depletion of inventory."
What does not sell will be donated to food banks, Mr. Dorfner said.
First Published February 28, 2011 12:34 am
