Basehor ? After only seven months in business, Wolf Creek Marketplace is closing its doors.

The 44,000-square-foot Basehor supermarket with its lighted howling wolf décor opened July 17, 2009, and will see its last customers this weekend.

Operating manager Kevin Barclay said the store didn’t have enough shoppers to keep it afloat in such a grueling economy.

“The people in Basehor really supported it, but we didn’t have enough traffic from the outlying areas, I think because Basehor isn’t really a destination shopping area,” Barclay said.

Barclay cited lack of development along Wolf Creek Parkway and the absence of the store’s planned second access point off 150th Street as additional reasons for the closure.

Though he didn’t give a definitive last day, he said the store wouldn’t be open past this weekend.

The store was a much-awaited, highly requested business in Basehor, and Barclay along with Benchmark Management owners Ed McIntosh and John Bell fought for more than five years to make it happen. But the grand opening was both a little too late and a little too early, Barclay said.

“We were about two years too late getting it in because our projections were from years ago before the economy bottomed out and the rooftops stopped building up,” Barclay said. “And we were about two years too early for this Cerner Corporation to go in at The Legends. With that coming in, those jobs and people moving here, this area’s just going to boom. It was a huge culmination of things that caused this closing.”

Basehor Mayor Terry Hill expressed sadness about the store’s demise, but said he was optimistic the building could be reused or a new store could open in the city.

“We’re looking forward to the possibility of a new supermarket coming in and being successful,” Hill said. “The community needs it.”

Shoppers selecting items from the store’s now-sparse shelves tell the same solemn story of Wolf Creek Marketplace’s collapse.

“I’m really sad,” Basehor resident Jane Ferris said. “The residents of the city waited a long time to have our own supermarket. Whether is was because of the economy or whatever else, I don’t know, but all of us are really sad.”