Fans of Leo’s Videos have been expecting the closing credits to roll for months, but Kelowna’s only video rental store will remain open after all.
In November, the popular movie rental store in the city’s Lower Mission announced it would be closing up shop after failing to find new owners despite an extensive search.
However, a last minute deal on New Year’s Day will keep the beloved store open under new ownership.
"We finalized the deal at 11 pm last night and the new primary owner is Nick Ksyniuk, who's a current employee, and he plans to run the store with his brother Alex who's also a current employee," explained Leo Bartels.
"Nick is excited to expand the board game section of the business and plans to eventually install playing tables and the movie rentals will continue as we've also done."
While the store did begin to sell off inventory after failing to find new owners, the large majority remains on the shelves.
"We held onto the key sections of inventory so people could still rent the movies over the past couple of months," said Bartels.
"About 6,000 old movies sold, but we started with roughly 27,000, so we're still one of the largest video rental stores in Canada."
Customers of the store will also be pleased to hear that the prices are expected to remain the same as well as people's account information.
However, the store's name and location could possibly see a change.
"We lost the lease but we're going to try and stay in this same building," said Bartels.
"It's a bit up in the air right now."
As for the man behind Leo's Video, Bartels is excited to spend some quality time with his newborn baby and his partner before pursuing a career as a middle school teacher.
If you get value from KelownaNow and believe local independent media is important to our community we ask that you please consider subscribing to our daily newsletter.
If you appreciate what we do, we ask that you consider supporting our local independent news platform.
