GUYSBOROUGH, N.S. — Kent Building Supplies is set to close a store it took over less than a year ago. Central Building Supplies joined Kent at the end of last December, when the Irving family purchased it from Antigonish entrepreneur Steve Smith. The store was founded in 1999 as County Building Supply by Dorian Harnish, working with his son Mark, who told the Guysborough Journal the closure is “premature”.
Harnish, who now runs M.E. Harnish Heating & Ventilation, says he is still a customer at his family’s former store. He told the Journal the store’s fate was clear when Kent took over from Smith. “They don’t understand the culture of running a small business in Nova Scotia,” he said, warning of a ripple effect on other local businesses. Until his father opened the store, he explained, “when people went out of town for that sheet of plywood, they bought their groceries on the same trip, or their propane, or their utensils for the kitchen; that sort of thing. When we had plywood here, they did all those things locally.”
