YACHATS — For three decades, Jerry Clark and three generations of his family ran Clark’s Market, the town’s only grocery store and a natural hub where members of this tight-knit community routinely bumped into one another.

So it’s likely that no one is more distraught by the recent closure of what’s now called the Yachats Village Market than Clark, who sold it and a grocery store in Waldport to a now-insolvent Bend developer in 2007.

Yachats has lost a critical piece of its social fabric — a place to buy food. And Clark’s family legacy is abruptly gone. “This makes me physically sick,” he said. “It’s my history.”

That’s why it’s Clark who has been assuring nervous residents who have been “ringing my phone off the hook” that the store will reopen after some messy ownership details are cleaned up, when he can regain legal possession of the store and find someone to run it.

More than just an inconvenience

In the meantime, people in Yachats are worried about the impact of losing their only grocery store.

“I really think someone will come in. My God, I hope it doesn’t take long,” said Judith MacDonald, owner of the adjacent Judith’s Kitchen Tools. “Who wants to come here for the weekend and rent a house, if they can’t even grocery shop?”

For some residents, it’s more than just an inconvenience, added Mary Wiltse, who owns Mari’s Books, a few doors down from the market. There are residents in this town of more than 800 people who can’t drive because they’re prone to seizures, or have forfeited their licenses as they’ve reached old age. Others don’t have motor-powered transportation because they want to leave a lighter carbon footprint, or they can’t afford it.

It’s these folks who inspired a group of community leaders to scramble to put together a volunteer grocery delivery service for those who need it. Last week, they put up signs around town alerting residents to the “Yachats Grocery Hotline,” which for now lists the phone number at City Hall, 541-547-4734.

The nearest grocery store is eight miles away in Waldport.

“We desperately need to have a place to buy affordable groceries,” Wiltse said. “There is a domino effect. People don’t have a place to buy groceries, maybe they don’t want to live here. My biggest fear is we become a ghost town.”

The Bend connection

The problem is the company Clark sold the stores to: Bend-based Audia Moore Properties LLC. After the sale in January 2007, Central Oregon’s housing market collapsed, and with it, so did Audia Moore’s capital.

The company’s owner, Jay Audia, committed suicide in July 2008 in his Bend home, as his wide-ranging business dealings slowly unraveled. Clark said the company owes tens of millions of dollars, including $1.5 million for the Waldport and Yachats properties. Representatives of the company did not return phone calls from The Register-Guard.

Clark is working to regain control over the properties and says he’s already talking to operators interested in leasing the stores with a purchase option, although he’s hamstrung at the moment, because he’s not yet the owner.

As Clark spoke, Larry Pearson strolled up. The 30-year Yachats resident lives 100 feet away from the market. “I guess now I’ll have to get in the car and drive eight miles away, write a list,” Pearson said. “I hate writing lists. What a bummer.”