Jere Downs

@JereDowns

ValuMarket will close on Hurstbourne Parkway at Shelbyville Road in early July, the family-owned grocery chain announced Monday.

Since 1982, ValuMarket's Hurstbourne store has served customers at the former site of an A&P grocery tucked into the Hurstbourne Plaza shopping center on Whittington Parkway. Property owners TIER REIT are redeveloping the corner, still home to the Z's Oyster Bar & Steakhouse and Brownie's the Shed Grille & Bar restaurants.

ValuMarket was recently informed the developer had no plans to include a grocery store, ValuMarket vice president James Neumann said Monday. As a result, the grocery company decided to terminate their lease a few months early to recoup in time for the fall holidays.

"It's not fun," Neumann said, adding his brother Greg Neumann "worked at this store the day it opened" in 1982. At 30,000 square feet, the grocery was last remodeled in 2003. Investment in the store has been delayed while ValuMarket leased space in recent years on a year-to-year basis, the result of several changes in land ownership since the 2008 financial crisis.

ValuMarket will still operate the Mid-City Mall at 1250 Bardstown Road in the Highlands, 5301 Mitscher Avenue in Iroquois Manor, 7519 Outer Loop Plaza in Fern Creek and 205 Oakbrooke Drive in Mount Washington. A sixth store, called First Choice Market, serves West Louisville customers at 3044 Wilson Avenue in Park DuValle. All stores in the company occupy leased space, he added.

A hunt for affordable rent to keep a ValuMarket location in Louisville's East end has so far been fruitless, he said, adding, "It's tough to find."

“With pending changes in development of the corner of Hurstbourne Lane and Shelbyville Road – something rumored to be happening for several years, coupled with tightening economics and a shift in local shopping habits, we will be closing the Hurstbourne location. This is not an easy decision, but, unfortunately, a necessary one,” Neumann said in a news release.

The closure comes amid continuing stiff competition among smaller retail grocers. Nearby in St. Matthews, Fresh Thyme, which is owned by the Meijer chain, debuted a new store this spring joining Trader Joe's, Whole Foods and Rainbow Blossom nearby. A few blocks east of ValuMarket on Hurstbourne Parkway, Lucky's Market just celebrated its second anniversary in the Louisville market.

"It's a lot of competition. Margins are so slim in the grocery business, it is tough," Lucky's spokeswoman Elisabeth Warner said Monday. "Everyone works really hard to make customers feel there is something special happening at their store."

The store that is also the headquarters for the ValuMarket chain begins markdowns June 13 and will close its doors for good by July 9. Pharmacy customers will be transferred to the ValuMarket store on Outer Loop. A spokeswoman for TIER REIT, which owns the real estate at one of the most valuable corners in the Louisville suburbs, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Shelbyville Road at Hurstbourne Parkway bears some of the heaviest vehicle traffic in the region, with some 40,000 vehicles daily traveling the Hurstbourne corridor, according to a traffic study completed a decade ago.

Drawing shoppers from the City of Hurstbourne, an older suburb incorporated in 1982, many ValuMarket customers at the store on Whittington Parkway skew older, with the most volume in sales arising from hot lunch or deli service to surrounding office workers and senior citizens, he said.

ValuMarket employs 450 people in the region, with one-third of that a full-time workforce, Neumann said. The 67 workers at the Hurstbourne store, he added, will be kept, if possible, on the company payroll

Jere Downs can be reached at 502-582-4669, JDowns@Courier-Journal.com and Jere Downs on Facebook.