‘Gut-shot to the Weston community’ as Peter’s market closes
When Peter’s Weston Market closes this weekend in the center of town, the executive director of the Westport-Weston Chamber of Commerce said, it will be a “gut-shot to the Weston community.
“Now (Weston residents) don’t have a go-to place to pick up groceries. They’re going to have to drive into Westport to get a carton of milk, or drive to Wilton,” Matthew Mandell said.
The store opened in the early 1950s, owner Jim Magee said, and his family has been running it since 1974. Economics are
ending that run.
“It really is a culmination of trying to keep up with those fixed operating costs (including
my commitment not to lay any employees off ) while sales declined,” Magee said in an email; he’d written in a Facebook post that sales have dropped 10 percent in five years.
“I attribute this mostly to, until very recently, the decline in people moving to Weston, the shift to online and buy-in-bulk shopping, and certainly the impact the pandemic has had on every community.”
Weston Shopping Center Associates had moved to evict the store in March 2020, claiming non-payment of rent. An agreement in September kept the store open through Sunday.
Mandell remembered the related Peter’s Bridge Market in the Saugatuck section of Westport and the blow to that community when it closed, which Magee said was because of increasing rents in 2003.
Mandell said he had not heard what might next take the retail space.
“It’s a shame. It’s a local market. It’s a loss of some of the character of the community, a place to see people,” he said.
“They’re going to have to go to a larger store outside the community, not see their neighbors. It puts more cars on the road for longer distances, so it’s not good for the environment, either.”
Magee said his father, Robert, and a partner took over Peter’s Bridge Market in 1972 and Peter’s Weston Market two years later from the original owner, Peter Vetromile. Jim Magee bought the Weston store in 1995.
“The last thing we’d ever want to do is close,” said Magee, who said he started working at the Bridge Market at 10 years old, assembling the Sunday newspapers.
He said he tried to explore options with his landlord in February, but those fell through. A GoFundMe page begun in April raised $121,432, and he said that and the Paycheck Protection Program kept them open until now.
“There are too many (supportive people) to name, but most recently the GoFundMe page and the outpouring of love and support that we’ve received this week is unbelievable,” Magee said. “To hear how much the store has meant to everyone makes me know it was all worth it.”