After 12 Years, Barsamian's Says Goodbye

Subhead: Costly Mall Venture Caused Store to Close its Doors

The lights are out at Barsamian's market even though it's the middle of the day.

Posters advertising wines, beers and pasta imported from Italy still adorn the windows of the specialty grocery store.

Food still sits on the shelves. Bales of unused plastic bags hang from their dispensers, awaiting purchases to fill them. The cash registers' liquid crystal displays are still lit--but instead of recording the prices of milk and pasta salad, they read "closed."

The sign on the door of the shop confirms the news.

"Sorry!" it reads. "Thank you for all your support. We are closed."

At about 4:30 p.m. last Thursday, Ed Barsamian closed his store's doors for the last time. The news came as a surprise not only to customers, but also to employees and indeed, to Barsamian himself.

He opened the store on March 6, 1987, with a ribbon-cutting ceremony officiated by then-mayor Walter Sullivan.

Twelve years later, the store had evolved to include standard mass-market groceries and gourmet/specialty foods alongside the organic, natural-foods fare it carried when it first opened.

Barsamian's was so successful that developers approached him two years ago about opening a second location--a move that proved to be fatal for both stores.

Barsamian decided to open a location in the Cambridgeside Galleria mall after representatives of New England Development, which owns the Galleria and several other malls in Greater Boston, suggested the venture.

Barsamian began to gather his resources. Friends and relatives chipped in. Veteran employees trained the newly hired. Barsamian transferred inventory from the old store to the new.

In the midst of preparations for the new store, Barsamian received some disturbing news about the Lechmere department store, located near the Galleria.

"We started construction, and one morning I'm reading the paper and I see that Lechmere is closing," Barsamian said.

Worried that the loss of Lechmere would cause a drain on the number of customers at the mall, Barsamian consulted his contacts at New England Development. According to Barsamian, they told him they had been unaware of the situation. By now, it was too late for Barsamian to change his mind.

Officials at New England Development could not be reached for comment yesterday.

The new Barsamian's opened in March 1998. In October, Lechmere closed. The outcome of the new location was as Barsamian had expected.

"The store was a complete failure," he said.

But because of all he'd invested in the new store, Barsamian could no longer afford to keep either store running, though he said his Mass. Ave. location attracted between 8,000 and 10,000 customers per week.

In February of this year, he filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Last Wednesday, Barsamian's landlord for the Mass. Ave. store took him to court and the store's status was switched to Chapter 7, or liquidation. This means the store must close and its assets will be sold.

Since Barsamian only found out what was happening last Tuesday evening, his employees had not discovered until Wednesday that they would be out of their jobs.

"Overnight, 30-some people lost their jobs," Barsamian said. He is working on finding them placements in other stores.

Chowdhury Baset had worked at the market 11 years. He began as a cashier and worked his way up to the position of night manager.

And Baset was one of the first to know about the impending shutdown. He was on duty last Tuesday night when Ed Barsamian called him and asked him to stay an extra hour or so, until Barsamian could come into the store.

That night, Barsamian told Baset about the imminent litigation and the possibility that the store would close.

"Mr. Barsamian came in with his wife, and both of them were crying," said Baset.

"I was speechless," he added. "I couldn't say a single word for a few minutes, and then I started crying."

Though Baset does have a day job with a medical billing company, he said he cherished the Barsamian's post.

"At first, I just needed a second job and it was close to my home," he said. "But it was a lot better than I expected working in a grocery store to be."

"It became part of my family," he explained. "That's how I felt about this place."

The store served mainly area residents, Harvard students and affiliates and those who worked nearby.

"The store was a hub for our community," said Freeman "Smoky" Markham, Barsamian's bakery manager. "The community is going to hurt without it."

The store also profited from its catering business, which Barsamian said served between 200 and 250 accounts every week. Much of the catering traffic came from Harvard.

"The University was our best customer," Barsamian said.

The history department was one of the store's catering clients. Laura M. Johnson, the staff assistant responsible for ordering food for department functions, said she is sad to see it go.

"I thought they had a fantastic store," she said. "It was very nicely set up, with a very interesting selection of foods."

Johnson said she was particularly fond of the store's large selection of salads, its variety of juices and its array of natural foods.

"It was just a funky store, a real fun place to go and broaden your horizons," she said.

So for now, the bottom line is that those plastic bags at the end of the checkout counter will never be filled with groceries. Customers will no longer sit at the store's granite counter, gazing out the window onto Mass. Ave. as they eat their gourmet lunches.

As for the future, Barsamian said, "I haven't closed the door on opening another store."

But it's a little early for that--for now, he said, he's busy "recovering."

"Quite honestly," he said, "right now I have no idea what I'm going to do."