Winn-Dixie’s closing could cost 80 jobs

Published 11:45 pm Wednesday, February 26, 2014

About 80 or more Winn-Dixie employees will be impacted by the Moultrie store’s closing in June, the company said on Wednesday.

Bi-Lo Holdings, parent company of Winn-Dixie, announced on Tuesday that the Moultrie Winn-Dixie #101 will be one of 13 stores in Florida, Georgia and South Carolina that it will be closing, beginning with Sweetbay #1906 in Naples, Fla., on March 22.

The Moultrie Winn-Dixie, one of four stores from that chain on a list provided by Bi-Lo and the only one among the 13 in Georgia, is slated for closure on June 14.

Bi-Lo, announced Tuesday that it received approval from the Federal Trade Commission to acquire some of the Sweetbay, Harveys and Reid’s supermarket chain stores owned by Delhaize America. The company said it will be necessary to close eight of the Delhaize America stores and five Bi-Lo Holdings stores due to close geographic proximity.

The Moultrie Winn-Dixie is directly across First Avenue Southeast from the Moultrie Harveys, one of the stores acquired by Bi-Lo Holdings.

In an email response Wednesday to The Observer, Bi-Lo said that it employs about 85 people at each of its stores.

“While positions in those affected stores will be eliminated, we anticipate many will find open positions in nearby Bi-Lo Holdings stores,” the email said.

The announcement comes less than two weeks after Riverside Manufacturing Co. announced that it was eliminating 140 jobs in its Moultrie cut-and-sew operation and warehousing. That closing is scheduled for late April. The company said that supply chain management, marketing, accounting and quality control laboratory testing will continue in Moultrie.

While the announcement of the closing of the Moultrie supermarket was not a surprise, it is a blow, said Darrell Moore, president of the Moultrie-Colquitt County Development Authority.

“I certainly feel for all the employees that are going to be displaced,” he said. “I’m certainly not surprised. Winn-Dixie scaled back and culled some of its stores several years ago. (Now) the same company owns Harveys. Any time you have a business close, it’s certainly not good.”

He said he recently was told that the Moultrie store has 65 employees, 10 to 15 of whom are full-time workers.

Moore said that he already has been in touch with two consultants who work with communities on economic development across the state. He said he was told by both that the closing of Winn-Dixie will help in attracting another chain into the community.

“We’re going to try to take the situation and take advantage of it and bring somebody else into the community,” Moore said. “This, according to them, is going to help us out because there will be a void to fill. Hopefully they are right. We have had a lot of interest.”

About five grocery stores have visited the area over the previous two years, Moore said.

“We’re trying to be positive, trying to find somebody to fill that void,” he said. “I just hate it for all the employees and all the patrons of Winn-Dixie. Some of the employees have been with the company for a long time.”