Movie fans will have one fewer place to get films in Española after the third of its four movie rental stores announced plans to close.
Movie Gallery posted signs outside its store last week announcing “Closing Sale” and “Everything Must Go” and putting its entire rental inventory up for sale at steep discounts. Store staff said no specific closing date has been set yet for the store.
Store staff said they had been forbidden to comment further on the closure and referred questions to Movie Gallery’s corporate headquarters. A recording at Movie Gallery’s corporate number states that the company has filed for bankruptcy and that the company has adopted a policy of not commenting on the bankruptcy or on store closures.
The Oregon-based Movie Gallery, Inc., which owns the Movie Gallery and Hollywood Video franchises, filed Feb. 2 for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in federal district court.
Movie Gallery had already closed “several hundred” stores in the past two years due to “economic and competitive realities,” according to a press release on the company website. The company plans to close at least 760 more of its 2,666 stores to emerge from bankruptcy with “a smaller base of profitable stores,” the release states.
Company and court records do not indicate whether the Española store closure is a result of the bankruptcy proceedings.
Customers walking out of Movie Gallery’s liquidation sale Monday afternoon with stacks of used movies and video games were hardly heartbroken to see the store go.
“I’ve been a member for a while, but they’ve got those little red boxes now,” Española resident Andrew Lopez said, referring to the Redbox automated movie rental kiosks at Walgreens and Walmart. “It’s a lot easier to use. And at a dollar a movie, you can’t beat that.”
Española had already lost two video rental stores in the past three years. Blockbuster Video closed in 2007 and Smith Video started liquidating its inventory in January.
Smith Video owner Melanie Smith said her store will remain open four days a week until she liquidates all her inventory. Smith said she still plans to open an indoor flea market, coffee shop and bakery, provided she can secure financing.
Movie Gallery’s closing leaves only one surviving video store in Española, At the Movies Video on Riverside Drive. Its owner did not return calls for comment, but an employee said business has been “picking up lately.”