Baillio’s, lease holder can’t reach accord on long-term agreement for retailer’s West Side location

Baillio’s is leaving the West Side just 18 months after it arrived.

The local electronics and appliance retailer announced Monday it is closing its Cottonwood Corners location due to an inability to obtain a permanent lease. April 22 is the final day of business there, 10420 Coors Bypass NW.

Owner Jack Baillio said that the store closure is not indicative of the health of the larger Baillio’s operation but rather issues between the property owner, Cottonwood Phase V LLC, and its lender.

Baillio’s will maintain its showroom/headquarters on Menaul NE and store in Santa Fe and will keep looking for a new place on the West Side, he said.

“We’ve been here 47 years … and we’ll be here many more years,” Baillio said.

Baillio’s opened its 30,000-square-foot West Side store in October of 2011, taking over the majority of an old Circuit City building.

Cottonwood Phase V President and managing member David Smoak said his company agreed to a 10-year lease with Baillio’s but the company’s lender ultimately rejected the deal. Smoak said the lender wanted a regional or national tenant, though it had also spurned Total Wine and Paradise Bakery for the same spot. (Total Wine ultimately moved into the space next door.)

Smoak said he and his partners have never seen a lender refuse to approve a tenant.

“It’s most unfortunate,” he said. “It was just a recalcitrant lender who had the right to say no and they did.”

He said he didn’t know what the future held for the site.

Baillio’s had operating under a temporary lease and that kept him from doing a lot of in-store upgrades he’d wanted. He classified the store’s business as “fair.”

The search is already under way for a new West Side spot, though no suitable replacement has been identified yet.

“We sure want to (have another West Side store), because the West side is underserved in the worst way right now, and that’s where most of the growth seems to be going,” he said.
— This article appeared on page B1 of the Albuquerque Journal