Downtown liquor store closes
POTTSTOWN » It looks like the borough will soon be losing its only downtown liquor store.
Located for the last 15 years in the former Levitz building at 212 E. High St., the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board has failed to come to terms on a new lease with the building’s owner, Scott Bentley.
Bentley, whose high-tech company Video-Ray occupies the rest of the downtown building, said the lease was in place when he bought the building and it expired in the summer of 2019.
“There was a clause that if neither side acted, it would be renewed every three months. We kept contacting them about a new lease, but they just ignored us,” Bentley said.
Finally, negotiations began and in December, he and the store’s representatives came to an agreement on a new five-year lease.
“But it had to be approved in Harrisburg and that was going to take months,” he said. “Then in March, they just reneged.”
“They came back to us and said we’ll only pay this price, lower than the one we had negotiated, take it or leave it, so I left it,” Bentley said.
“It seems like they prefer suburban locations now, which means people who live downtown can’t walk to the liquor store,” Bentley said.
Elizabeth Brassell, director of policy and communications for the PCLB, responded to a Mercury query late Wednesday by noting simply, “the PLCB has not yet made a decision whether to close its downtown Pottstown store, renew its existing lease or serve this community through another Fine Wine & Good Spirits location.”
Peggy Lee-Clark, executive director of PAID, the borough’s economic development agency, said she took the news in stride.
“We’ll get something better,” she said. “It’s a good space and it’s in good shape.”
Lee-Clark said that on the one hand, she understood the PCLB’s position, noting she did not believe the store did a particularly high volume of business “or brought a high volume of customers to downtown.”
But on the other hand, as an agency in a government whose general policy is to promote the financial health of Pennsylvania’s downtowns, the move becomes harder to justify.
Lee-Clark also recognized that for the restaurants downtown without a liquor license, the store’s departure removes the option for diners to walk down the street and pick up a bottle of wine.
But she noted that Pottstown is also home to several local distilling and brewing companies and that they may be able to provide alternatives for those restaurants “that help support other Pottstown businesses.”