The family-owned Pierce's Marketplace grocery store chain will close the Eastside Market in Baraboo by mid-January and convert it to a warehouse for its four other stores, General Manager Jerry Gentz said.

The store opened in 2005 and was not meeting sales expectations, Gentz said.

Gentz said closing the store was a tough decision after being in the general manager's position "for only about two weeks." He downplayed any suggestion that the new Viking Express Market several blocks to the west was a major factor in closing the store. Instead, he said, when the Pierce family opened the market they expected greater residential growth on Baraboo's east side than has taken place. The net result is the store is simply too large for the number of people who shop there on a regular basis, Gentz said.

"It's a large-sized volume store, and those size stores need a lot of sales," he said. "It's just not doing enough sales to support the size store."

While they will try to sublet the front part of the leased building, Pierce's management plans to keep the back of the store for use as a warehouse, he said. That will allow the chain to bring in larger truckloads of groceries and to pursue a higher-volume, lower-price strategy for all their four stores in West Baraboo, Portage, Madison and Muscoda.

"We'll try to do a better job to put some pricing in there that will draw them over to the west store," he said. "Our business has changed, and you've got to buy in large quantities to get the best deal, and that's exactly what we're going to try to do."

On Monday, Pierce's will begin a liquidation sale at the Eastside store.

"We plan to offer all full services through Christmas," Gentz said. "And along with the Christmas ad there will be a 10-percent discount starting this Monday."

After Christmas week, the discount will be raised to 20 percent with an eye on liquidating the stock and closing the retail outlet by mid-January. If necessary, Gentz said they might increase the discount to 25 percent in an effort to clear goods from the store.

Gentz said he knows there are likely some customers who favor the Eastside Market. However, he does not think closing it will hurt the company's overall sales in Baraboo very much.

"We'll try to retain those customers the best we can," he said. "(Their West Baraboo grocery) is a store that's been here for many years that has done very well.

"There's a lot of loyal shoppers with the Pierces."

Baraboo Area Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Gene Dalhoff said he was surprised to hear the store is closing. But in the tight economy, Baraboo businesses are having their ups and downs. And that includes stores that provide people with even the most basic necessities, he said.

"I've talked with a lot of retailers over the last couple of weeks and it's really a mixed bag," he said. "With the economy the way it is, some of them are predictably doing poorer than what they did last year at this time," Dalhoff said. "On the other hand, I did talk to some retailers, businesses and professional services, that are actually doing better in 2008 than in 2007. That was really encouraging to me."

Gentz said about 25 employees work at the Eastside store and the management is as worried about them as about closing the store. The company will try to move as many as possible to jobs at other locations such as West Baraboo or the Portage Marketplace, he said.

"We're just trying to go through that right now, but we'll try to keep as many as we can," he said. "It will never be 100 percent, there's just too many to be honest about it."