The door bell dinged one last time during business hours Tuesday at the Tracy Municipal Liquor Store on South Street.
At 2 p.m. Tuesday, liquor store manager Tam Schons locked the front door of the old store for the last time, as the move to the highway became official and Boxcar Liquors opened.
When asked if she will miss the old building, Schons slyly replied, “Of course we will. We hope the new place will be a lot more energy-efficient, let’s put it that way.”
The decision to use the property on the highway for the new liquor store was finalized by the city council in January 2019. Back in 2017, serious talks concerning the liquor store involved either moving the business or selling the City’s liquor license to a private business because it was bleeding money — as much as $31,000 in the first nine months of 2017, according to financial statements. At the time, the preferred destination was the former Med Club building, but that never came to fruition.
The liquor store building was once home to a municipal bar, but that was closed on Oct. 1, 2016 — a decision that did not go over well with Tracy residents — after some 80 years of serving patrons in town (it opened sometime in the 1930s after the repeal of prohibition in 1933). The building has definitely seen better days; last summer a large number of bricks fell off a portion of the west wall.
There has been no indication of what will become of the building now that it is empty.