Tri-State Liquors moves to new site
Sole Tri-State Mall tenant changes its Claymont location
For months, Tri-State Liquors had been the sole tenant in Claymont’s once-bustling Tri-State Mall property.
The mall itself is long gone, closed since 2015 and crumbled six years later by the probing claw of a big digger. The same goes for the former Levitz furniture store next door. The property’s owners, developer KPR Centers, plan a 525,000-square-foot warehouse, one of at least three massive warehouses arriving to change the landscape of Claymont.
But Tri-State Liquors, here since 1984 as one of the largest wine and beer and liquor stores in the state, remained in the Tri-State strip mall property adjoining the former mall.
The store — which advertises “20,000 cases of imported and domestic beers, soda, wine, wine coolers, liquor and more” — kept its doors open even as other tenants disappeared, and as digging crews began laying the groundwork for the new warehouse’s foundation.
“We always knew we had a long-term lease in place,” said Tri-State Liquors co-owner Andrew Byer, whose father Joe founded the store 39 or so years ago and who now runs the store with his brother, Michael. “It was just a matter of figuring out what to do.”
And so KPR built Tri-State Liquors a spiffy new green-awninged 15,000-square-foot building next door. Slowly over recent weeks, the Byers began filling the space with new beverage deliveries while keeping the old store running.
“It was a win-win situation,” Byer said. “We got the new building, and they’re gonna get their nice project.”
On Thursday at 4 p.m., the family-owned wine, beer and liquor superstore said goodbye to its former home and cut the ribbon to its new one, pretty much next door at 383 Naamans Road.
“We’ll have food. We’ll have a bunch of tastings going on, and we invited a bunch of people down,” Byers said beforehand. “It’ll be nice.”
As of the day before its grand opening, the store was already mostly filled with everything from cabernet sauvignon to aged Scotch, with shelf after shelf of what Byer calls “the coldest beer case in the county.” (That’s 36 degrees, for the record.) A new battery of big-screen TVs means that customers can watch the Eagles or Phillies game while out on beer runs. The original location was intended to stay open through Wednesday, Byer said. But a power outage at the strip mall after Tuesday’s storm meant they had to close the store a day early. The brothers hadn’t intended to even lose a single day’s worth of revenues, keeping the shelves at the first store fully stocked even as they filled the shelves of the new one.
They have a week to vacate the old property, Byer said. And then it’s due to come down.
But the new store’s opening day had special significance for the family. Jan. 11 is the birthday of the store’s founder, Joe Byer, a fact Andrew didn’t even realize until he said the date out loud and an employee brought it up.
And so the store’s first day in its new location was also an homage to the person who started it all in 1984.
“We just lost him, so it’s a little sentimental to us,” Byer said. “But this is our 40th year. And we had a chance to move and open up this really nice store, and be a big part of the Claymont revitalization.”