Corner1 Locals vote on produce, artworks for return of Millthorpe corner store

The long wait for the return of Millthorpe’s iconic corner store is almost over with finishing touches now being put in place for an October opening.

The eight-month closure of the historic business saw major renovation work to stabilise the iconic two-storey structure and get it up to 21st-century building standards.

In a nice touch for the local community, owner Adam Ashcroft has instituted a form of participatory democracy via social media, to determine both the store’s stock and a display of old images.

Opening under the new name, “Ashcrofts on Pym”, the outlet will revert to a mini-mart facility that it was for decades before recent owners turned it into a newsagent-cum-coffee shop.

“We’re looking at, say, mid to late October? We’re just waiting for the cash registers and some other equipment,” Adam explained.

“We don’t want to go with a big splash though, we’d like a bit of a soft opening, just to get everything bedded down,” he added.

The Ashcroft family, who run two supermarkets in Orange under the IGA banner, were offered the building and business after COVID lockdowns caused dwindling visitor numbers to the historic village, rendering the venture uneconomical.

“The store closed at the end of February, and we got the keys in April, so it’s been about six months.

“But there was so much work on the building itself before we could look at reopening,” Adam explained.

Demolishing layers of chipboard and rotten wood flooring, they found weight-bearing columns for the floor above propped on precarious piles of local blue stone, eventually stripping back the building to its foundations.

Builders recently laid a metre-deep concrete slab, using innovative new weight reduction technology, to ensure the new store is on a firm footing.

“Underneath the slab are waffle pods; they’re the latest cutting-edge technology so you don’t have to pour as much, and there’s couple of inch gaps so it doesn’t develop cracks,” he explained.

“It came up pretty good, it’s four or five feet deep and we spent 140 hours on the grinders to bring up the river rock that was embedded in it, then seven layers of an epoxy sealer.”

Through the “Ashcrofts on Pym” Facebook page, Adam has been keeping locals up to date with the development, recently polling residents on preferred product lines.

“We’re an old-style village grocer, so I thought I’d put something up to ask what people wanted us to stock, we’ve had a lot of requests.

“From things such as long-life milk; fresh produce, tofu, fruit and vegetables;  specialist lines of jams and chutneys; a whole bunch of providore lines… we’ve had over 150 comments,” he added.

Keenly aware of the varied history of the building ranging from a grocery, hardware, footwear, electricals, and also drapery (cloth and curtains), locals have also been asked to vote on preferred blown-up images of the old store to feature inside the mini-mart.

“We got them from Hayley at the (Golden Memories) Museum, we had nine and people got to choose four, which we’ll display,” Adam said.

“They’ll be a metre by 1.4m vinyl posters, and they’ll go up on the wall.”

Living upstairs like old-style retail traders of the 19th century, Adam and his partner, Danika, and family and friends, discovered the unique challenge of moving modern furniture up narrow Victorian staircases.

“It was a two-day battle — fridges, cupboards, beds, other furniture, it all had to go up the stairs.”

The central role that the corner store — lost in so many of our communities — means to the village, has created a shared sense of purpose for Adam and locals following the renovation work on their Facebook page.

“So many people have loved seeing how it’s going, it’s a journey for them, emotionally, as well as for us.

“It’s also made us feel a part of the town already, makes us feel a lot more welcome,” Adam concluded.