Kim Yong Hyun hasn’t seen his business this slow since he took over the Minute Stop Market almost four years ago.
He’s seen fewer customers walk through the doors of his convenience store at Jackson Highway and North Fork Road since the nearby Newaukum Bridge was closed for a reconstruction project. The road closure and detour have rerouted the daily traffic that would typically pass by his store in the tiny crossroads community of Forest.
“I can’t say how many months I can go like this,” Kim said, adding that the number of customers a day has dropped from about 400 to 40.
Pulling in about $1,200 to $1,500 a day before the road closure, Kim now brings in around $400 to $500. He says he may have to file for bankruptcy if the trend continues for another three months. The road is scheduled to be closed for a year, but officials say the bridge could be completed in six months.
Cutting back the hours of his full-time and part-time employees, Kim is working 16-hour days to make things work.
The road closure is just the latest blow in a recent string of bad luck, he said.
“Too many people laid off,” Kim said. “Business is hard. The economy is bad, and then the bridge is going to be out a year.”
Kim is also concerned that new sin taxes may hurt his business — most of his sales are cigarettes and beer.
County officials say there’s little that can be done to bring back business to his shop.
“I feel for the guy. I really do,” Lewis County Commissioner Lee Grose said. “But there’s nothing really we can do.”
Grose said rerouting the detour wouldn’t bring traffic back to the business. Building a $1 million temporary bridge isn’t financially feasible and opening up one lane of the bridge is logistically out of the question.
“Any business affected by the closure is not the responsibility of the county,” Lewis County Commissioner Bill Schulte said. “However, this is not the kind of time you want to stress businesses in the county, when they’re already struggling.”
What has frustrated Kim the most is what he feels was a lack of communication leading up to the bridge closure.
“No letter, no communication, no one explained. Just the sign,” Kim said, describing a sign that was posted about a half mile from his business warning travelers the bridge a couple miles away is closed.
Lewis County Commissioner Ron Averill agreed the county should have stepped beyond newspaper legal ads and passed public notices and held a community meeting.
“I do think Mr. Kim has a point,” he said. “When we’re going to have an extensive closure, informing the public is a must and we’ll have to look at our procedure.”
But for now, Kim sits on a stool behind the counter watching television instead of waiting on customers during his busiest time of the day.
“All day quiet,” he said.
•••
Marqise Allen: (360) 807-8237
•••
History of the Minute Stop Market
Originally built in the 1880s, the store known as the Minute Stop Market was once an overnight stop for travelers along the main north-south route between Portland and Seattle.
The store a few miles south of Chehalis was a stage stop and post office for travelers along the plank highway. The Trodahl family owned and operated the store for much of the 20th century. After falling on hard times, the store was closed for about five years in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It reopened in 1993.
Source: Chronicle archives
