Shop owners shut doors on their dreams

MUNDELEIN, Ill. -- Audrey Frankowski lived her dream for 21 years. It died this month when the sour economy forced her to close Jungleland Pet Center.

She sold Betty the boa and the last puppies and kittens, got 10 cents on the dollar for leftover goods and took home Ozzie, a macaw she couldn't bear to sell.

Frankowski and her husband, Rick, locked the store's doors for the final time after taking down the "50% off" signs and their handwritten farewell to customers: "More than words can express, we have enjoyed 21 wonderful years of caring for you and your pets. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts."

Frankowski, 53, isn't sure what she'll do now. Rick Frankowski, 47, is working seven days a week as a security guard. Store manager Bill Allen, 58, Audrey's brother, hopes to find a sales job. Walking away from the store they all loved, Allen says, "is depressing, and it's so sad."

The economy is forcing many other small businesses to close — including some owned by families for generations — shrinking shoppers' options and eroding communities' character.

The February economic report by the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) warns the recession could force "widespread business failures."

The economic stimulus package probably won't help much, says the NFIB's tax counsel, Bill Rys. The group failed to persuade Congress to suspend payroll taxes for six months to reduce small businesses' labor costs. No federal or trade group tracks closures of family businesses.

Not deep enough reserves

There are about 25 million family-owned businesses in the USA, ranging from Fortune 500 companies to mom-and-pop operations, says Robin Klemm, director of a family-business program at Oregon State University.

"What you're seeing is more of the small ones biting the dust," she says. They are most at risk in tough times because many lack solid business plans and deep reserves, Klemm says. "A rising tide lifts all boats, but when the tide recedes, if you're not over deep water, you're dead."

Among dying family stores:

• Harry W. Schwartz Bookshops will close all four Milwaukee stores March 31 after 82 years. "We are just bleeding," President Carol Grossmeyer says.

• Peerless Furniture will close its stores in Flint and Lansing, Mich., in April, putting 46 employees out of work. "It really bothers me to see it end under my watch," says President Jim Pemberton, whose great-uncle bought the company in 1929.

• In Jackson, Miss., J. Leland Speed is closing North Jackson Honda. His dad bought it in 1974. People can't afford motorcycles and scooters, he says, and sales have plummeted.

• Mike Rowe Jr. is closing the men's clothing store his grandfather opened in Louisburg, N.C., in 1952. "There's a time and season for everything, and I guess our season is up," he says.

The closure of family-owned businesses eliminates important role models, especially in poor and minority communities, says Bruce Corrie, dean of the College of Business at Concordia University in St. Paul. "They are the ways in which the American dream is realized," he says.

Chain stores encroached

Jungleland Pet Center was one of the first businesses to open in a strip mall at the busy intersection of two state highways in this Chicago suburb. There were 83 tanks of tropical fish, a penned-in play area for puppies and a star attraction: Teeta the spider monkey.

Tears stream down Audrey Frankowski's face as she talks about those early days and the unraveling of her life-long ambition to care for animals. "Business gradually went down after 9/11, and then in the last couple years, it was disastrous," she says.

The store once had 24 employees, but as the economy worsened, some were laid off. Chain pet stores opened within 5 miles of Jungleland, so she lowered prices to stay competitive.

"The last two years have been crazy," Frankowski says. "I put every single dime that we ever saved out of here back into it, and then went and got loans. Now I'm stuck with the loans."

The Frankowskis started talking last summer about closing. "Then all of a sudden, it would be busy again, and we'd think, OK, it's coming back," she says. In October, amid predictions of the worst retail holiday season ever, they agreed it was time. "Every day we would ... just sit and cry together," Frankowski says.

Jungleland's demise troubles its former neighbors. The strip mall is anchored by a Jewel grocery store and a Burlington Coat Factory, but it has several vacant stores once occupied by a Ben Franklin Dollar Plus, dry cleaners, dentist's office, cybercafé and teachers' supply store. Most closed over the past two years.

Each closure puts the remaining small stores at risk, says Bhavik Patel, who owns Wonderland Tobacco with an uncle. "There's no flow" of traffic and "fewer people coming in," Patel says, making it less likely that new stores will move in. "People don't want to invest money. They're scared," he says.

Frankowski is grieving. "The last two months have been like a wake," she says. "People keep coming in and saying how sorry they are. They cry and hug me. It has been just like a funeral."