West Point Market Closing After Nearly 80 Years

The nearly 80-year-old Ohio-based independent gourmet food emporium had an offer too good to pass up, reports The Akron Beacon Journal, and is closing at the end of the year.

The West Market Street property in Akron’s Wallhaven neighborhood is to be sold to a developer planning a new and expanded shopping center anchored by an as-yet-unnamed specialty grocer.

On Friday afternoon, Ward 8 Councilwoman Marilyn Keith said a real estate agent familiar with the negotiations over the properties involved said the new specialty store would be a Whole Foods.

The nationally known West Point, store officials say, is facing increased competition in the specialty grocery business, with traditional grocers expanding their offerings and a growth in high-end grocery chains.

The sale of the store and land, the officials say, will allow them to create a new West Point business – informally dubbed “West Point II.”

Still-developing plans to keep the valuable West Point brand alive include small niche markets, “the best of West Point,” said Larry Uhl, president of the business. These small shops likely would sell West Point’s popular Killer Brownies, prepared foods, baked goods, a wide variety of cheese and wine, and other items.

The sale means West Point leaders can “move a right-size West Point Market forward” without leaving Wallhaven in the lurch, Uhl said. The new development “will have a positive impact on all businesses in the Wallhaven district,” said Russ Vernon, who retired from West Point in 2000, handing the reins to Uhl, and his son Rick Vernon, the store’s CEO. Wallhaven will get “something neat and happening,” Uhl said.

Uhl and Vernon met with employees Friday morning about the closing and future plans. West Point, which employs roughly 95 full- and part-time workers, will offer financial incentives to keep employees on hand through the end of the year.

Uhl said the hope is that many employees can be retained at the new, reformatted West Point, which could begin operations as soon as early next year.