Mr. Cs shuttered, future unclear

CARBONDALE The owner of Mr. Cs Liquors & Wines in Carbondale, which closed for unexplained reasons June 12, said this week he is hoping the store will reopen soon, whether under his name or someone elses.The most immediate plan for the business appears to be an auction scheduled for next week at the store, in the Carbondale Plaza building at the corner of Main Street and Highway 133.The closure, by the business owners own admission, came after he fell behind in rent, payroll and payments to vendors, among other problems.Rick Edelburg, who has owned the store for approximately two years, relocated it from the front of the building, facing the highway, to a larger space at the rear of the building late last year.Now Edelburg is working with a group of financial backers to reorganize the business and reopen it.The guys who have the money behind me are very anxious to get the store reopened, Edelburg said Tuesday.The store closed after the staff reportedly had not been paid for a couple of weeks and vendors had started taking back their goods.A sign on the door bears the name of Edelburg and Terry Kirks company, Alandale LLC of Scottsdale, Ariz., as owners of the building. The sign offers to sell the fixtures, equipment, inventory, computer records, data, software and backup files, contract rights and trade name of the business at a July 2 auction at the store.One employee, who asked not to be named, said Edelburg had not been in the store for a couple of weeks prior to its closure. Edelburg reportedly went to Wisconsin in the interim.When reached by phone, Edelburg declined to discuss the details behind the collapse of his business, other than to say, I ran into some difficulties and to offer that, in my very best-case scenario, hopefully, we should be open again really soon.He said one of the backers of the business is Kirk, who encouraged the move from the smaller space at the front into the larger space in back, which once housed Clarks Natural Foods. Kirk, who lives in Arizona, is on his way up right now, as we speak, to work with Edelburg on getting the business open again, Edelburg said. Kirk could not be reached for comment.Edelburg was not sure whether the business, if it reopened, would be under his ownership, or sold to someone else.I have some people who are very interested, he said, explaining that these unidentified backers might lend him the money to reorganize and reopen, or they might buy the business from him.As far as the half-dozen or so employees who worked for Edelburg, and who are waiting to be paid for the last couple of weeks of business, he said, Thats another thing were working on right now.jcolson@aspentimes.com