Tum-A-Lum Lumber Co. will close its Redmond lumberyard by Sept. 15 after nearly 100 years, company officials said Tuesday. Tum-A-Lum opened in 1910, making it one of the two oldest businesses in the city. The Redmond Spokesman, which is owned by The Bulletin’s parent company, Western Communications Inc., also opened that year.

Tum-A-Lum could not survive the combined onslaught of increased competition and falling demand for construction materials in Central Oregon, said Marvin May, the vice president and chief operating officer of the Bend-based company.

“We’re closing because of the economics of the downturn,” May said. “We’ve liked operating in Redmond and would like to look in the area for another location after the downturn, possibly two or three years down the road.”

Located on Evergreen Avenue in downtown Redmond, the 1.5-acre lumberyard and building-supply store sits at a critical real estate corner in downtown Redmond.

The property — which is near the site of a Parr Lumber Co. yard which also plans to move out of downtown Redmond — could be purchased by either the city or private developers for redevelopment, city officials and business leaders say.

At the Redmond Tum-A-Lum, meanwhile, nine employees were given layoff notices Tuesday, May said. They will be given opportunities to apply when positions become available at the company’s four other lumberyards in The Dalles, Hood River, Pendleton and Susanville, Calif., he said.

“We’ve had great people working for us over the years and an excellent customer base,” May said. “There just wasn’t enough business.”

The company also cited declining business earlier this year when it closed Copeland Lumber in Carson City, Nev., after more than 50 years in operation, according to a report in the Nevada Appeal newspaper.

The Redmond Tum-A-Lum site is considered important for the future development of the city’s downtown because it has both north-south and east-west visibility along Fifth Street and Evergreen Avenue. Evergreen is an exit from the U.S. Highway 97 reroute.

Before Tuesday’s announcement, the city talked with Tum-A-Lum about relocating to another site in Redmond, but it’s not negotiating with the company, said City Manager Michael Patterson.

“We definitely want to see them in Redmond in one form or another,” Patterson said. “If money wasn’t an object, we would certainly buy it.”

At some point, however, it would make “a ton of sense” for someone to develop the property, Patterson said.

Tum-A-Lum’s lumberyard is next to Hillsboro-based Parr Lumber, which earlier this year announced it would eventually move out of downtown to a location west of the city limits. Parr officials declined to comment Tuesday on Tum-A-Lum’s announcement.

The Parr site has been mentioned as a potential location for a new parking garage and other downtown redevelopment projects in Redmond.