At Southern States, Empty Shelves -

As a child working on a dairy farm on the western edge of Leesburg, Jim Roberts drove a team of work horses to the Southern States store in town to fill his wagon with cow feed.

Just before the cooperative closed Saturday, Roberts drove to the store in his Ford van, but not to buy the lawn chemicals or garden tools that had been outselling farm supplies among the store's increasingly suburban customers. He came to say his goodbyes.

"I just wanted to see what was going on," Roberts, 67, of Leesburg, who runs a garage cleaning business, said as he stood by empty shelves in his faded jeans, plaid shirt and wide-brimmed hat. "See if people had found jobs."

Some of the only remaining goods were an odd assortment of dog harnesses, insect repellant and Christmas decorations. As time passed last week, the store became emptier, the discounts steeper and the mood more somber, until Saturday, the final day of business for a remnant of a slower-paced, more tightly knit Loudoun County.

"I'm shocked they're closing this store, especially this one," said Billy Grimes, 47, the store manager who has worked for Southern States since he was 16, first in Maryland and since 1986 in Leesburg. "They don't realize the effect on the community."

The decision was made by the central office of the Richmond-based Southern States Cooperative Inc., which runs more than 1,350 retail outlets from Maine to Florida. Last year, the company reported losses of $68.3 million and closed 17 stores.

Six stores, including the one in Leesburg, will close this month, although stores in Purcellville, Middleburg and Manassas and the petroleum business in Leesburg will remain open.

The Leesburg store grossed a half-million dollars a year and was profitable, employees said. Alexandra Schexnayder, a spokeswoman for Southern States in Richmond, would not comment on profits.

The value of the store property on Catoctin Circle was estimated at about $1.5 million, said Mike Field of Field Hyundai Suzuki, whose purchase bid was trumped by another party. Schexnayder would not identify the buyer, saying the contract had not been finalized.

On an overcast Saturday afternoon, shelves outside the store displayed a few forlorn potted herbs with browning leaves, and the cilantro was already flowering. Inside, most of the shelves had been taken down, and boxes were piled on the floors. Little remained on display other than Kandy King, Indian Summer and Golden Queen corn seed, plastic containers of Bug Beater, bulb dust and pickling salt for canning. A sign on the door said: "Sorry no checks, cash credit cards only. No farm plan."

Wendy Vest, a clerk, had brought in food for the staff members she said are "more like family" than coworkers. About a dozen black balloons were tied to a pillar in the store to be released outside when the store locked its doors for the last time. "We're pretty sad," Vest said.

Over decades, Southern States has been the retail face of the changes in the area, as farms became housing tracts and the store moved from selling bulk feed to garden supplies. The store opened as the Leesburg Cooperative in 1934. By the 1940s, Roberts recalled a routine of traveling to the town stock yard, blacksmiths and Southern States, where farmers would bring home-grown grains to grind for their animals' feed.

In the early years, other longtime customers said, Southern States sold live ducks and chickens and seed for any flowers but no potted plants.

The cooperative office was a place where farmers could gather on rainy days when they couldn't work outside. "They'd come in with old muddy boots, and it didn't matter," said Rose Peyton, who worked at the store since 1975. "They could come in any way they wanted."

As a young farmhand, Jimmy Carroll, now 55 and Grimes's brother-in-law, drove a tractor to town to sit and talk with farmers on benches in front of the store.

Now there are no benches, few farmers and Carroll is a construction superintendent with developer Stanley Martin. He builds on the same land near Loudoun County Parkway and at Route 7 near Sterling that he remembers as farms. His two sons, who once worked on farms making hay, also work in construction.

"It's a bittersweet deal," Carroll said. "You can't stop growth, and it's my livelihood and I enjoy it. But I was 13 years old before I ever had running water or electricity. I don't miss not having it, but I miss the slower times from the past."

In 1992, Southern States became a garden center as the number of farms was clearly dwindling. The new store focused on suburban needs for lawn chemicals and dog collars. But it also continued to supply horse feed, equine influenza vaccinations and Gatsby and Weaver halters, as well as old-fashioned hard Christmas candy and country-cured hams.

The store often served 500 people a day, Grimes said, and weekend customers would line up halfway down the aisles. The garden center kept an in-house horticulturalist and offered free classes in lawn and pond maintenance and gardening.

"Most stores you go in, you're lucky if someone even acknowledges you," Grimes said. This was a place where the workers would still load your car.

Last week, customers talked disappointedly about the closing as they poked among fuchsia petunias and violet wishbone flowers and apricot blue bonnet outside.

"No mulch left?" one woman called out.

"I am so upset! I wanted to take a soil testing class! Now who's gonna help in Leesburg?" another said.

"No more birdbaths?" another woman asked. "Only the bottoms," a staff person answered.

"You got a job yet?" another customer asked a cashier.

Of 25 workers, three are considering working at other Southern States locations.

Another three plan to work in a new garden store, Catoctin Center, that Southern States employee Mike Virts is opening at the old Foxglove Gardens store in Virginia Village off Catoctin Circle. Foxglove owner Pam Marcus decided to close the store after her husband, Steven, died last winter.

The new garden center will sell plants from the same vendors as Southern States but drop horse supplies. "The store's not big enough," Virts said.

That leaves 17 people without work. "I'm taking time off," some said when a succession of concerned customers asked about their plans.

In a back office of the store decorated with framed portraits of horses, Grimes described what made the place where he has worked all his life so special.

"The pleasantness of just coming in with people who've been around for a time," he said. "You walk in and feel comfortable."

"It's sort of like a lot of things, it's sort of like the changing of the guard," customer Tom Lindsey, who lives between Lucketts and Lovettsville, said Saturday. "What used to be isn't anymore. It's kind of just sad, you know?"

Tommy Hall, above, who has worked at the Leesburg Southern States store for 25 years, likes to use a blowtorch to light his cigarettes. Michelle Veney, at left, who bought her first riding mower at the store, says she is sorry to see it go. Outside and inside, the Southern States store was nearly empty by Saturday.

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