Palace of the Osage grocery store to close

The Palace of the Osage grocery store is closing but the Osage LLC is not going to let it close permanently.

Osage LLC Board President, Charles Maker, said in a phone interview that the Osage LLC will actively begin looking for a new buyer in the near future once current owner Rick Parker closes down the store.

“This is a guess at this stage, I don’t know exactly all what we will go through getting Rick Parker’s business closed, all of our business with him. He seems to have gotten himself in pretty deep as far as his financial business is concerned,” Maker said of Parker’s back-tax liability to the Oklahoma Tax Commission on his numerous businesses.

“We all wanted [Parker] to make a go at this and in fact, we were willing to help him out as much as we could, but apparently [Parker] couldn’t figure out how to get it done,” Maker said. 

Parker, who did not return repeated phone calls for this story, recently had to sell his Barnsdall Market due to his financial woes and it’s unknown if he will be selling a gas station he owns in Pawhuska, but, he is solely blaming the Osage LLC for the closing of the Palace, according to a statement he made to The Bigheart Times.

“He had some pretty serious back tax issues and we’ve stipulated we were able to help him until he had those tax issues resolved or had an agreement with the [Oklahoma] tax commission we felt comfortable with and that stuff wasn’t forthcoming or in a timely fashion, so I’m supposing by the time he could figure things out the hole was too deep, that’s only a guess,” Maker said. “We certainly hope for the best and never did anything to try to slow him down or cause him to fail.”

Maker said the LLC will not be pouring money into the Palace in order to sell it.

“It’s also rumored that the tribe has put in hundreds of thousands into the Palace and we don’t want to continue that, regardless of what’s happened in the past, we don’t want to continue to pour money into it.

“We want to get it ready for selling it and sell it to a viable owner – and I hope we can. I don’t have a crystal ball so I don’t know if we’re going to have a qualified buyer come out, it’s going to take the right person, the right combination,” Maker said.

Palace of the Osage

The Palace of the Osage grocery has had its ups and downs over the years. The 31^st Osage Tribal Council purchased the store for $285,000 in 2003 and the tribe ran the store as a department under the Executive Branch of the new government until 2008 when the store went under the Osage LLC.

The Osage LLC oversaw the operations of the store for a year but the store was losing money. According to the LLC’s 2009 annual report, the Palace lost $91,000 in the last three months of 2009.

The LLC sold the store to Barnsdall grocer Rick Parker in August of 2009 for $439,500.

At the time the LLC sold the Palace to Parker, it was rumored Parker had too many businesses to take on the Palace as well. The Osage News asked Maker, LLC board president, whether or not the LLC knew of Parker’s struggling financial status at the time.

“I can’t speak to it without checking back, I know that he was at the very least . . . we realized he was spread pretty thin. And, I think maybe the Palace was untimely for [Parker] because he was in expansion mode and he really wanted the Palace,” Maker said. “From my perspective he was probably a little over extended, but he was willing to give it a shot, but yeah, he was overextended.”

The Palace currently employs 12 area residents and serves the communities of Fairfax and Grayhorse. According to the Osage Nation Membership Office, approximately 350 Osages live in the area.

“The closing of the Palace will have a huge impact on the citizens of Fairfax,” said Sidonie Cannon, Fairfax resident and Grayhorse District Cook. “The employees will lose their jobs. The city will not receive taxes from the store. There will be no source of fresh meat, fresh vegetables or fruit.

“During the June dances, thousands of dollars in groceries came out of that store. The Palace would deliver to Grayhorse several times a day.”

Dwindling business

The store has been struggling in recent weeks; shelves are bare, there hasn’t been dairy, meat or produce for weeks. Employees of the Palace knew the store might close but hoped it wouldn’t.

Store manager Robert Taylor said he knew they were in trouble when the Oklahoma Tax Commission was threatening to close Parker’s businesses if he didn’t pay his taxes.

“We missed a payment for our grocery truck because he had to make up and pay all of his back taxes or the [Oklahoma] tax commission was going to close all of his stores,” Taylor said. “So he paid his back taxes using the money we would have used to buy groceries. So that’s why we haven’t been able to buy groceries.”

Taylor, 62, has been with the Palace since 2003 and doesn’t know what he and his employees will do for jobs once the store closes. He joked that he would make a good Walmart greeter.  “There’s not much else for me at this age.”

Fairfax has always had a grocery store, except for a brief period after it burned down in 1999 and was rebuilt in 2000.

Taylor said he knows of a couple of people that have expressed interest in the Palace and will be forwarding that information to the LLC. He’s also worried about the people he sees every day coming to the store, asking when a new shipment will be in. He just tells them he doesn’t know.

“The head start, the day care, the youth programs, they all buy their supplies from us. The hospital, the nursing home, I could go on and on,” he said. “I hope the LLC finds a buyer. This store is too important to this community not to keep it open.”

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