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Baker Ace Hardware, 801 N St., will close after more than a century of supplying contractors, do-it-yourselfers and particular people looking for stuff they couldn't find anywhere else. 

On Monday, another store, Murphy's QP Hardware on North 48th Street, announced plans to close after nearly 60 years in business.

The Baker property is being sold to make way for what of Lafayette, Indiana, plans to be a seven-story student housing project. 

About 10 Baker employees are being offered severance packages if they'll stay to the end. 

That might not be until the end of March or later, according to Dave White, who with his brother Larry are the fourth generation of their family to own the store and its predecessor.

Regular customers received notification of the closing plans recently, and word spread, as did the despair of those who have always found something at Baker's -- unique cabinet hardware is one example -- they could find nowhere else in town.  

"I have mixed feelings, kind of sad, but kind of good," Dave White said in a telephone interview. "We're supposed to be out by March 31, but it might take longer than that."

The liquidation sale starts Monday.

White has been part of the operation since he was 14, in 1966. But he's been semiretired and not regularly walking the store's floor for about 10 years.

"With the Pinnacle Bank Arena and all the changes in the Haymarket, I realized that property was becoming very valuable at the time I'm ready to retire and move on, which my wife informed me I will be doing,"  he said.

Word of mouth put the property on the market. A lot of people expressed interest and low-balled the Whites, Dave White said. Then they made a deal with Trinitas, which specializes in student housing.

"I'm not going to tell you anything more than that, and they might not, either," White said. "When I took over, all I wanted to do was make it to 100 years. We made that, so everything else was just gravy. I'm ready to get out."

Manager Norris Vetter, with 13 years at Baker and 38 years in the hardware business, has nothing lined up, but no plans to retire, either.

"I'm the captain," he said, "and I go down with the boat, I guess, until it's closed."

Tim Knoppe, facilities manager at Lincoln Industries, was a regular patron.  

"They were about the only hardware store in town that supplied a lot of commercial goods as well as those for residential," Knoppe said. "It was a good mixture to deal with. The people who work there were always friendly, (and) we've always had good relations if I had a special order, or anything like that."

Dave White acknowledged there are a lot of people who are going to be upset by the store's closing.

"I never thought about it that way," he said. "They'll just have to go farther. We have a lot of things they can't get anywhere else. ... Things change."