Smith's Food and Drug Store on Bogus Basin Road in Boise opened with a bang September 1980 but closed with a whimper this weekend.
As of Saturday, Smith's is history in southwest Idaho. The chain, based in Salt Lake City, closed its six stores Saturday, four of them in Boise.In November, the company said it would make good its threat to pull out if it could not get a zoning variance for a large store in south Boise. By Saturday, the stores were virtually hollow.
Shavers Inc., a small family-owned chain, will sublease the Bogus Basin Road store. The Smith's store in Payette opened last week as an Albertson's store, and Pay Less Drug Stores may close a deal to buy Smith's Meridian store next week.
There are no takers yet for the other three Boise stores.
Smith's zoning struggle dates back to 1973, with initials plans for a 178,000-square-foot shopping center. It was scaled back to one-fourth that size, but residents in Boise's north end fought it because they said it would pull too much traffic through the residential neighborhoods.
The more recent zoning failure that led to Smith's closures involved store expansions that would have required a few south Boise residents to sell their homes to make room for the new store.