The Anchor Room to close

FORT WAYNE, IND. (WANE) - After four decades in business, the owners of a home-grown Fort Wayne business say they're being forced to liquidate. The Anchor Room Bookstore sits at the intersection of Stellhorn and Lahmeyer Road, but a dramatic restructuring is underway.

A string of tough times is forcing the 40 year old family-owned business to basically start over.

"This has been my whole life, so it's really hard to have this going on right now,” said Tonya Miller, Anchor Room store manager and daughter of the store’s founders.

"In 1969, Paul and Pauline Holsobble had a vision to have a Christian bookstore on the northeast side of Fort Wayne," Miller said.

And so the store started in their basement, moved to the garage, and later to a string of other locations. It opened along Lahmeyer and Stellhorn Roads in 1998. Shortly there after, everything changed.

"Our sales have probably been cut in half since 11 years ago when we opened this store, the world was different. It was before 9/11, before many people shopped online," Miller said.

The struggling economy hasn't helped, and in February, Paul Holsobble learned devastating news.

"My father Paul does have an inoperable brain tumor," Miller said.

But the family continues to have faith… and faith that while the store is closing, the Anchor Room will continue online , and possibly as a brick and mortar store once again.

"We hope to open a smaller location with less overhead in the future, but that has yet to be determined," Miller said.

Customers say they hate to see it go.

"This is one of the Christian bookstores that we come to frequently and we live up in Milford,” said Stephanie York.

“I was really surprised to hear the news! We love coming here,” said Heather Bremer.

"It's a nice place to come. It's a good place to get resources and it will be missed because there are not a lot of places to get good resources for families anymore," Melissa York said.

A liquidation sale is underway now, with everything going for 25% off, but there's no timeline to actually close this store.

It employs about 2-dozen people. To further help make ends meet, "The Ridge Church" took up about 1/3 of the space about two years ago. It will remain for now, while the future of this building is explored.