The Greensburg Family Video store on South Main Street is closing under a nationwide shuttering of all of its stores, according to its parent company, Highland Ventures.

President Keith Hoogland pointed to the decrease in foot traffic as well as lack of new movie releases caused by the coronavirus pandemic as reasons for the closure. He released a statement Tuesday, calling it the “end of an era.”

“Today, I have to make the difficult announcement that we are closing all Family Video locations,” he said.

The store in Greensburg, a former supermarket, was closed Wednesday and will reopen Friday for a sale of all its DVDs, candy and video games, according to Jack Illingworth, who has worked at the store for about a year. Illingworth predicted the store might remain open for a month as it sells the inventory, which he said included “thousands” of movies.

Illingworth said he was not surprised by the announcement, but still it came as a “shock” that the store will be closing and he soon will be out of a job. He had been working less this past year because the company reduced the number of hours it was open, Illingworth said.

“It is depressing,” Illingworth said.

The company could not survive the double hit of the pandemic-related shutdowns and the change in people’s movie viewing habits, brought on by the pandemic, Ilingworth said. People who weren’t accustomed to watching movies on streaming services were forced to rely on those services to watch movies during the shutdown this spring, Illingworth said.

New movie rentals were a good part of the business, but Hollywood was shut down last year and movies were not being released, resulting in another blow to sales, Illingworth said.

Illingworth said he believed the Greensburg store, with a loyal customer base, might have been able to survive if it were independently owned.

“We did everything we could. We have a lot of loyal customers. They are almost like family,” Illingworth said.

There will be liquidation sales during which all movies, candy, fixtures and other items will be sold. Afterward, the stores will close.

Family Video at one time had 800 locations and employed 10,000 people with hundreds of movie and gaming titles available, Hoogland said. Since the demise of Blockbuster and Hollywood Video, Family Video became the area’s sole rental chain with brick-and-mortar locations. Hoogland said Family Video survived 10 years after other rental stores closed.

Locally, Greensburg has been the last remaining location. Latrobe’s Family Video closed in mid-2019 after the building where it was housed changed hands, according to an assistant manager at the time. The pandemic forced the New Kensington location, which was in leased space, to shutter after state-ordered closures last year, a district manager said then.

At the start of the pandemic, the rental chain had about 550 locations in the United States and Canada.

Other stores in the region that will be closing are in Altoona, Butler, Erie, Greenville, Indiana, Johnstown, New Brighton and Sharon, according to the Family Video website. FamilyVideo.com will remain in operation.

“I am extremely thankful to our employees and customers that were instrumental in Family Video’s success,” Hoogland said. “Without you, we would not have been the last man standing in our industry.”

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