ShopRite of Ellenville closed its doors for the last time at 5 p.m. on Saturday, August 31, after more than 30 years of supplying our area with everything a “full service” supermarket can offer. The last hour was anticlimactic, quiet, and yes, a little mournful.

ShopRite opened in Ellenville in November, 1994. It was a very different time for the area. Imperial Schrade and Hydro Norsk were still operating factories just outside of town. The Nevele Hotel was still in the hands of the family who built it. The Minnewaska State Park Preserve was just a year old.

Since that time ShopRite saw the demise of Grand Union supermarket and Jamesway and Ames stores. All three of those were off Route 209 in Napanoch, where the Walmart destined to become ShopRite’s greatest competitor now sits. Walmart and ShopRite were rivals since the beginning. Before the mega-retailer even opened, ShopRite filed a lawsuit to try and prevent them from moving into their territory. The owner of a liquor store near the Walmart site started a letter-writing campaign that forced ShopRite to back down. But ShopRite held strong after Walmart debuted – it even shouldered through a closure of a few months when a fire broke out in the back of the store, just around the time Walmart opened its doors.

When Ames shut all their 327 stores back in 2002, including at Napanoch, they let go of 22,000 employees. But that particular disruption is not what is happening with ShopRite. Over the past year or so, most of the employees that were familiar faces to shoppers were moved to other ShopRite stores. Some to Montgomery, some to Middletown, one or two to Liberty, and some workers found other jobs, including one who is becoming a custodian at Ellenville schools.

Not all have been placed and some are still working with Wakefern, the parent company of the ShopRite group, to find new positions in the area. “The company has been helpful,” one employee told us. “I moved over to the Middletown Store about a year ago.”

Others, who did not want to be named, voiced regret and even anger at the closure. “I have three years left until retirement,” one employee said, “and I thought I would get that here.”

On Saturday though, for old times’ sake, many of the former staff were back at the local ShopRite and there were hugs and tears and memories exchanged. Indeed, from about 4:30 onwards there were more staff than shoppers in the store. “This is very sad,” said Zach Sticco, a New Paltz student who worked at ShopRite for four years. “I’m hoping to move over to the ShopRite in New Paltz.”

For someone who has shopped there for thirty years it was eerie to wander through with my camera, photographing completely empty display cases. The familiar frozen pizzas, peas and carrots, milk, butter and American cheese, all gone. And so was the beer. And while strolling through the emptiness there was the sad realization that this was over now, and none of us will be shopping for groceries there again.

Neighboring businesses are not unduly concerned about the empty building. Alan Knee at Il Paradiso, the long-standing Italian restaurant in the plaza next to the (former) ShopRite, said that not only will Il Paradiso continue in business, but he and the other shops in the center (a Chinese restaurant, Middletown Medical, and a laundromat), are expecting to receive new leases and will carry on.

What will replace the ShopRite? All we can report is rumor – unconfirmed, but repeated. There is a general suspicion that a fitness center will take some of that space and that another, smaller supermarket from another chain will take the rest. Time will tell. In the meantime, folks will have to find somewhere else to go.