This week we reported another of Warrnambool's longest-running family businesses will close within weeks.

Geoff Swinton, long-time manager of Swintons furniture and bedding, which has a 159-year link to the city, is preparing for retirement. The building was sold in 2022 and while the new owner, Southern Stay disability support services, doesn't take possession until April, Swintons will close when the last of its stock is sold. There's not much left now.

Every long-term resident would have bought furniture at Swintons over the years. I remember the ads in the 1990s where a well-known local was naked promoting its pine furniture warehouse. I remember buying a bed from there, the various recliners for my parents.

I'm old enough to also remember shopping outings with my nana to Swintons when I was a boy. In those days, the weekly grocery shop was completed at the supermarket where items were packed into brown paper bags before we ducked next door into the furniture and drapery store. As Geoff reminisced this week, it was a mini-Myer, Warnambool's mini-Myer.

The supermarket remains but the Swinton family sold it in the 1990s. Swintons' imminent closure is the end of an era. It will leave not only a gap in the furniture market but also our social history and a link to a golden period of trading when enterprising settlers, through necessity, found ways to make a livelihood. They adapted over the years as demand changed. Swintons used to have stores dotted around the district but the arrival of cars spelt the end of those.

Southern Stay purchased the sizeable building with the intent of turning it into the organisation's headquarters. It is operating out of three Warrnambool offices, which is far from ideal. But since it decided to buy the site, building costs have exploded and it has now deferred the multi-million redevelopment plans. It is hoping to lease out the building while it re-assesses its options. It's a prudent decision but how long could such a large, prominent CBD site sit vacant? Apart from being used as a vaccination centre and polling booth at times, the nearby former Sam's Warehouse building has long been vacant. Our CBD needs big sites like those occupied and thriving.

I'd like to wish Geoff all the best in retirement, thanks for the memories and quality customer service.

Until next week,

Greg Best

Editor, The Standard