Planned Builders Emporium Closure Greeted by Sadness : Retailing: At original store, shoppers and staff recall better times. ‘I don’t know what else to do,’ one says.

At the Builders Emporium in Van Nuys, where the 97-store do-it-yourself chain was launched 47 years ago, a day of brisk hardware business was tarnished Wednesday by confusion, sorrow, anger and anxiety over the announcement that the firm is going out of business.

Longtime employees and loyal customers spoke as if they felt jilted.

“I raised three kids by myself from that store,” said hardware salesman Paul Sewell of Pacoima. “All I make is $11.49 (an hour), and I been there close to 29 years. . . . I don’t know what else I’m going to do.”

“It’s too bad,” said Sandra Moore of Van Nuys, a shopper at the company for the last 28 years, as she rolled a cart full of bamboo screen that she planned to place over a wall to hide graffiti.

“It will be one more building that will be graffitied and vandalized,” she said.

“It’s a shame, after so many years,” said Frank Martinez of Pacoima as he left the store with an acrylic bathroom vanity top.

Martinez said he has been shopping for hardware there since the store opened in 1946, the year he got out of the Army and moved to the San Fernando Valley. He said he stayed loyal even when a Home Depot opened nearer his home.

In spite of reports that a super sale would begin Monday as the chain prepared to cease operations in October, a steady stream of customers kept the checkers busy tallying everything from deck chairs and ratchet wrenches to plywood sheets and periwinkles, often stopping to chat with favored employees about the news.

“A Japanese firm going to buy it out?” one customer asked checker Florence Cousins, a 23-year veteran of the store.

“Nobody’s buying us out,” answered Cousins glumly.

Although the company’s headquarters ordered employees not to talk to reporters--allowing photographs but no interviews in the store--many talked anyway, mainly to reminisce about better times and to express their bitterness over what they said was management’s offhandedness in notifying them that their employment is almost over.

Aside from rumors that the chain would either sell out or close only its less successful stores, many said their first hint that their store would also close came from television news reports Tuesday.

“The sad part about it is they kept everything such a secret from us,” Cousins said between customers. “We didn’t hear anything until yesterday.

“I noticed it said in the paper that people in the Irvine office were going to get severance pay,” she said. “What happens to us?”

A company spokesman said there will be no severance pay for store employees, partly because they will be able to work eight to 10 more weeks for going-out-of-business sales; employees of the division office will lose their jobs sooner.

Nursery specialist Tory Dowsett, like several other employees, said he had expected that the Van Nuys store, which was recently rebuilt, would survive any cutback because it was the original store and remained profitable.

“They should close the stores that were not going good and keep the ones that are making money,” Sewell said. “It’s ridiculous. Poor management.”

“I’m surprised,” Dowsett said. “Builders Emporium 601 (as it was designated in the company) was a symbol, the flagship of a fleet. A lot of our customers said, ‘Well, you’re not going to be closed.’ But we were.”

Many employees seemed confident about finding new work.

“I’m sure I’ll get a job,” Dowsett said. “I may not like it. I may be making $6 an hour and changing bed pans . . . but whatever it takes.”

His main concern, he said, was getting medical coverage, because he takes expensive medication.