The little market on Powell is closed once again. Most recently known as Summer’s Market & Deli, it shut its doors for good in early October and has been listed for sale since mid-month.
Long called the Powell Avenue Market, the one-room storefront building is over 70 years old. Previous tenants included both local and East Indian owners, usually offering everything from produce to beer, chips to staples.
In 2010, it was purchased by Ann Bingham, who grew up on nearby Rose Lane. She and her husband expanded the market to include a deli. “This is her dream,” said her husband, Rob Dickerson, an environmental scientist with the state EPA when they opened the store in the summer of 2011. But almost immediately Bingham’s dream encountered reality.
She complained that high school students were constantly shoplifting, and the headache of running the business weighed on her. Her husband was, according to members of her family at the time, unhelpful. They separated when she left on New Year’s Day, 2012, to go to Ukiah without explanation.
She was found deceased in a hotel soon thereafter.
Resurrection
In the spring of 2014, Summer Sebastiani and her husband Todd Fernandez once again opened the market, changing its name to the eponymous Summer’s and doubling up on the grilled sandwiches, baked goods and espresso coffees. It quickly became a neighborhood favorite, and was soon discovered by weekend visitors as well.
Though they closed this year with the onset of fall, traditionally the end of the tourist season and their slowest time (and the beginning of the school year), they denied they were especially worried about cash flow or shelf depreciation.
“It’s not about money, it’s just exhaustion. I did it for my entire 40s and I’m ready for something different,” Fernandez said, as he and Sebastiani scurried to clean up the nearly empty market to show prospective buyers. “We had our turn. That was it.”
The couple has a second house in Santa Rosa, where they intend to move once they settle up matters on Powell Avenue.
Earlier this year, the couple won a Commercial Historic Restoration Award from the Healdsburg Museum and Historical Society for their work on the 1947 building.
Realtor David Hunt, whose wife Carol Hunt sits on the Planning Commission, is handling the sale of the two conjoined lots, the store at 557 Powell St. and the 2-bed, 2-bath home behind it, at 555 Powell Ave. The store is zoned commercial and already has an off-sale beer and wine license.
When asked if a new owner might use the outdoor patio as a serving area for on-sale drinks, Fernandez shrugged. “They could put a helicopter landing pad here if they want to,” he said. “Money talks.”
The combined lots are listed for $2.965 million. Acting realtor Hunt said they have had “quite a lot of interest, and it’s not even listed on MLS yet.”
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