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A Mainstay on Union
Street
The shift of Blue
Hill’s retail stores from Main Street to South Street, on the
outskirts of the shopping district, started in the late ’80s. And
aside from the Merrill & Hinckley store, the town’s downtown has not
been the same since.
“The movement of
the shops has had more effect on Blue Hill than anything else,
really,” recalled Selectman Gordon Emerson, who has watched Blue
Hill’s changes for 40 years.
Today, the
Tradewinds Marketplace and the Rite Aid pharmacy are the anchors of
the South Street businesses along Route 172/176.
Before Tradewinds
opened in 2000, Largay’s Market had that corner property. The
Largay’s building, which also housed an auto parts store and a
beauty shop, burned in December 1999.
Back on Main
Street, the building Largay’s left in 1988 remains empty.
It is surrounded
by the kinds of businesses that emerged in the ’90s. Art galleries,
a wine shop, a bookshop, a florist, a bakery and a bistro, plus real
estate and professional offices, now dot the downtown.
But the
longstanding Merrill & Hinckley store, across from the Town Hall,
has 100 years on the rest of the retailers in town. The Hinckley
family started the general store in 1890, and Diane Hinckley sold to
the Bannister family in the 1940s.
The shop still
sells everything that consumers need, with groceries, a deli and
on-site butcher.
There are some
other old-time touches, in addition to the wooden floor that has
survived four expansions of the original building.
Families in town
can run up charges through the month. Those who can’t make it in to
the store can phone in an order and get it home-delivered. And for
those who do drive up, clerks will carry groceries out to the car.
Said Vicki Smith,
the store manager who has been there for seven years: “We are not a
supermarket, but we are full-service. We are also still downtown.”
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