Bluewave hopes to help business reopen

Editor's Note: Jane Sears, Ontario Regional Manager, issued this statement on behalf of Bluewave Energy regarding the recent closure of Rainy River's last gas station.

Bluewave recognizes the significance of the Rainy River service station to the community and the decision to close our interest in this business was not taken lightly.
Over the past few years that we have been involved in the business we have lost on average between $50,000- $100,000 annually at this location, and could not sustain that. Having said that, Bluewave is very committed to assisting a potential new buyer in an effort to support a different and local business model that could work. For example, the store itself is large and has the capacity to be subdivided into different components to offer services that the community could benefit from.
A local person might have the flexibility to offer different services from this location under one roof that would increase the revenue and service offering to the community and make the service station a successful local business.
Bluewave owns the pumps at the site and one of the reasons that we have not removed them yet is to ensure they would be available should a local buyer be interested in re-opening the service station. We can offer a few different purchase options for the equipment to assist a new buyer in getting set up. Any inquires for the business should be directed to Wendy Marmus at Bluewave in Kenora.
We realize that the community relied on the service station and in an effort to minimize the impact we are in the process of supplying tanks to many Town services to ensure that you still have local fuel supply in Rainy River. In the time between closing the store and having the tanks installed we made arrangements for an employee to open the pumps for a couple of hours a day to Town services to ensure that they are still able to fuel the vehicles. The full cost of this is being borne by Bluewave and not our customers and is being done to ensure that essential services are maintained in Rainy River.