The familiar Maine department store Renys has now broken even more hearts, going out of business a day earlier than expected.
The Congress Street anchor wasn’t due to call it quits til New Year’s Eve. But it locked its doors forever at 3 p.m. Tuesday.
“It is with a heavy heart that we announce the Portland Renys will be permanently closing sooner than expected,” the retailer wrote in a statement on social media Tuesday.
“We are incredibly grateful for your understanding and support over the past 15 years, and we truly couldn’t have done it without you!”
The store’s “absence will be felt immediately,” Maine Wire reporter Jon Fetherston wrote earlier this month about its unfortunate demise.
“For many residents, Renys served as the kind of practical, all-purpose store that made living downtown easier, a place to pick up winter gear, kitchen essentials, or everyday basics without leaving the peninsula,” Fetherston wrote.
Reny’s opened in Maine’s largest city in 2011, taking over space that previously housed an L.L.Bean outlet store.
The store with 16 employees never saw business rebound after the COVID-19 pandemic, company officials said.
In reality, COVID may be too convenient a way of rationalizing much of what’s really going on in drug-invested Portland, Maine.
The city’s main business district arguably has become a ghost town since the addicted “homeless” population’s sleeping bags have virtually taken over what are now needle, detritus-littered sidewalks where public defecation is the norm.
“There is work to be done to improve conditions for the local businesses downtown,” Portland Economic Development Director Greg Watson told WMTW-TV’s Jim Keithly six months ago, referring to the growing storefront-vacancy rate.
“The city is already engaged in some of that work,” Watson claimed.
Renys got its start in 1949 when Robert H. Reny (known as “R.H.”) opened his first store in Damariscotta.
“The first winter was so slow that in order to keep the store open, R.H. had to go door-to-door around the area selling merchandise out of his old Hudson,” the store says on its website.
With the Portland branch closing, the third-generation, family-owned business now has 18 stores across the state.
Renys has two stores in Damariscotta and one each in Bath, Bangor, Belfast, Bridgton, Camden, Dexter, Ellsworth, Farmington, Gardiner, Madison, Pittsfield, Saco, Topsham, Waterville, Wells and Windham.
