As mega-retailer Walmart announced it would close its Boulder Neighborhood Market after a brief four years, much of Boulder cheered. A Daily Camera story on the planned exit drew dozens of gleeful comments on Facebook, and a handful of individuals — the same ones who protested the superstore’s opening — came out on closing day to celebrate its demise.

But Jan Lagomarsino Brummett was trying to figure out where she would now shop for groceries. Where else could she find organic produce at such affordable prices, or canned goods that were sometimes three times cheaper than at neighboring stores? Where else could she go and, in one trip, get luggage and bandages, vitamins and her favorite brand of natural tea?

It wasn’t that Brummett suffered from a lack of choice: Boulder is home to more grocery stores than nearly anywhere in the nation. But, as a senior counting, if maybe not every penny, then at least watching them closely, Brummett turned to Walmart because it helped her practice responsible spending.

“If you have two cans of organic peas, and one costs 50 cents and the other costs $1.50, why would you go to the store with the $1.50 one?” she said. “I’m not wasting my dollars when I could make the savings (and) have that money for something else. It’s responsible spending.”

As Boulder property values skyrocket to new and once-unimaginable heights, stores catering to those of more modest means have fled. In the past four years, Boulder has lost its Walmart, a Savers thrift store and its only dollar store, a Dollar Tree. In recent months, discount home goods store Tuesday morning left Table Mesa Shopping Center in South Boulder, and Ross shuttered its Boulder location in Market Square at the intersection of 30th and Walnut.

Industry insiders are puzzled by the moves, and policy experts worry that lower-income residents — already burdened with the double yoke of rising housing costs and stagnating wages — will be left will fewer affordable options for buying basic necessities.

Everywhere but here

Retail experts are largely stumped as to why stores would be leaving Boulder at a time when the city’s economy — and the performance of off-price retailers — has never been better.

With the exception of Walmart, all the publicly traded departed stores are in the midst of expansions. (Information on Savers was not available; officials for the private company did not respond to requests for comment, though its website lists three new or soon-to-be stores in Canada.)

Two off-price stores remain. TJX Companies operates the slightly higher-priced Marshalls and HomeGoods. A spokesperson declined to comment on the performance of the stores.

“There’s almost no closures going on” among those retailers, said Jan Kniffen, who heads his own retail consulting firm in the New York area. “They’re not closing stores (and) they’re seldom leaving areas (where) they’re already established.”

Savers and Dollar Tree left when the building they were in sold, to be redeveloped into a Lucky’s Market. A spokesperson for Dollar Tree did not directly answer a question on why it chose not to relocate elsewhere in Boulder, except to say the brand carefully reviews “market demographics (and) “the competitive landscape” before opening a new store.

As a company, Dollar Tree is flourishing, said analyst Kelly Crago, with New York-based Buckingham Research Group.

Rising lease costs?

It’s less clear why Ross and Tuesday Morning left; the former did not respond to requests for comment and the latter declined. Lease costs could have played a role, as property values across the county have increased some 37.5 percent between 2013 and 2016. Those costs are often passed along from landlords to tenants in the form of higher rents.

Crago said that non-department stores such as Dollar Tree typically set up in markets with rents in the range of $15 to $18 per square foot. Boulder’s median (excluding the high-price downtown market) ranges from $18 to $26 per square foot, according to a fourth quarter report from Newmark Knight Frank of Denver.

But Allen Ginsborg, developer of Longmont’s Village at the Peaks, argued that rents are inconsequential to retailers — so long as sales are high enough to offset the cost.

“They’re really focused on sales volume,” Ginsborg said. “Their return on investment is measured on the amount of sales they can produce.”

Kniffen, too, said these retailers are not leaving other areas that have experience rapid rent growth. Boulder, he posited, is “an outlier,” possibly due to local factors such as the historically low unemployment making it difficult for national chains to recruit and retain workers.

“It’s not a story I’ve heard” elsewhere, he said. “It seems very odd to me that those names would be exiting Boulder.”

Dwindling numbers

Reduced demand is a possible explanation. Census data suggests that Boulder’s population of low-income earners are shrinking as a share of the total population. Specifically, the group making $15,000 to $25,000 (adjusted for inflation), which made up 10.3 percent of the population in 2011, by 2016 made up only 8.3 percent.

Jennifer Greany, owner and Manager of the ARES Thrift Store in Boulder, said her regular group of needs-based customers has noticeably diminished in recent years.

“We have hundreds of regulars within a 10-block radius that pop in three, four, seven times a week, and we count on them (to) provide the backbone of our sales,” Greany said. But there are fewer of them now — “especially since 2014. Some come back to visit and let us know they had to move to Broomfield or Longmont.”

Thrift stores are often among the first to go in communities with increasing costs, said Derek Hyra, an associate professor in the Department of Public Administration and Policy at American University who has studied the effects of neighborhood change on housing, urban politics and race.

An abundance of thrift

That hasn’t happened yet in Boulder. The city has an abundance of places to buy used goods: six thrift stores, plus twice as many consignment shops, and sellers of pre-owned sports gear and books. And business is booming: The Boulder Goodwill is one of the top-performing along the Front Range, averaging over 600 customers a day during sale weekends.

Because of the relative wealth of Boulder, the quality of used goods available at thrift stores is often higher than for new products on shelves at off-price stores. Boulder shoppers appreciate that value, said Diane McCarthy, who manages the Greenwood Wildlife Thrift Shop and Consignment Gallery, which supports Greenwood Wildlife Rehabilitation Center.

“We have high-end, brand-name clothing, furniture, decor, jewelry,” McCarthy said. “You can find pretty nice things.”

Thrift stores also play to Boulder’s love of sustainability and upcycling, as well as the element of giving back. Sans Savers, all of the city’s thrift options support various nonprofits.

Still, things are tough. Greany said she has offset ARES’ rising rent by increasing the amount of product it processes some 20 to 30 percent, with staff working late into the night to prepare inventory.

“How long we can be sustainable,” she said, “that’s the magic question. Time is of the essence when supporting small business.”

Left behind

Though their numbers may be dwindling, Boulder is still home to many low-earners. Nearly one-third of households earned less than $35,000 in 2016, according to Census data.

Advocates warn that thrift stores are not viable alternatives for the low-income populations: inventory is limited; searching for items can be time consuming; and, crucially, they don’t sell food, one of the biggest expenses for a family or individual.

The average American spends 12.4 percent of his or her annual budget on food; with at least one child in the home, that rises to 14.8 percent, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The expense is second only to housing — 36.7 percent for single person — and transportation, 15.9 percent.

Numerous studies on food deserts show that when affordable food is not available locally, residents will travel long distances to get it, or spend more on nearby, but usually less healthy, items. When it comes to other segments of retail, research is lagging, Hyra said.

“Not enough people are really trying to understand (the) amenities that low-income people utilize,” Hyra said, instead focusing on access to affordable housing.

Because housing gets subsidized by various government entities, low-income populations often outlast the stores and services catering to them.

“If you can preserve affordable housing but not amenities for low-income residents, where does that leave them?”

A better place?

For many in Boulder, it doesn’t matter why Walmart or many of these other stores have left town — simply that they are gone is enough. Brummett was well acquainted with Boulderites’ negative opinions of the store, going to great lengths to hide her shopping bags from neighbors.

Although she doesn’t count herself among the group that “had to” shop there, she liked being able to afford organic produce, and saving money to spend on other things: rent, clothing, a meal out. The jubilation over Walmart’s demise is “very self-centered and selfish,” she said. “It doesn’t make Boulder a better place to be.”

Brummett has found somewhere better: Arizona, where she moved in recent months when she realized her housing options had become limited. Her long-time “discount shopping buddy,” Andrea Tuttle, remains, though she has begun to take more of her dollars out of town.

“I go to Longmont a lot,” said Tuttle, a retired educator. The city is home to most of the stores that have recently left Boulder — two Walmarts, three Dollar Trees, a Ross, a Tuesday Morning — plus several more affordable shops such as Big Lots and discount grocery store Save-A-Lot.

“Longmont has everything,” Tuttle said. “You learn to shop where you know things are.

“We used to just be so happy that everything we needed was right in town,” Brummett added. “Garage sales and thrift stores” are nice, she said, “but there’s a point you just don’t find what you need.”

Shay Castle: 303-473-1626, castles@dailycamera.com or twitter.com/shayshinecastle