The Marketplace is in for the long haul

Sales may be down by over 70 percent at the Point Roberts Marketplace, but owner Ali Hayton wants the community to know the store has no plans to close.

Hayton said the announcement that Banner Bank would be closing its Point Roberts branch, located inside the Marketplace building, had prompted concern the community could also lose its only grocery store. “I just want to reassure the community we aren’t going anywhere,” she said.

Hayton’s father Darrell Skiles bought the Point Roberts market in 1998. She took over after his retirement and said they had learned from years of business that fluctuates with the Canadian dollar. “You need to be ready for anything up here,” she said. “When the dollar was strong and we were busy, we saved our money and when it went down, we tightened our belts.”

This summer, with the border closed, instead of seeing 8,000 or more customers a week, they were serving 2,000 or less. While they had to lay off part-time staff, they have been able to keep full-time staff on. Hayton said keeping staff on board and protecting benefits has been a top priority. “The people here are what make it work.”

Gaps on the shelves had not been due to problems getting goods to Point Roberts,

Hayton said, but to bottlenecks in the national and regional supply lines. “I have a store in Mount Vernon and the outages I have there are the same ones I have here,” she said.

Hayton said she had been frustrated by decision-makers from border authorities to the county and port, and hoped growing national attention would lead to more common sense solutions. “The decision making has been arbitrary and not well thought out,” she said.

The recently established ferry service, for example, “made a lot of people excited but it is hurting local businesses already struggling with the effects of the border closure,” Hayton said. “Nobody making that decision talked to the businesses which could be affected.”

Hayton has been working with local fire chief Christopher Carleton, who has spearheaded efforts to get agencies on both sides of the border to acknowledge communities isolated by the border closure need special consideration, including members of the congressional delegation and consular officials in order to get restrictions at the border for property owners and cross-border students adjusted.

“We’re reaching out to everyone we can, trying to find the right person who can actually do something,” she said, adding she hoped growing media attention would help the Point.

“I hope somebody sees it and realizes there are these three little enclaves in the United States and Canada and right now they need help.”