ELLENVILE � When the news hit back in May that General Motors was going to be closing dealerships across the country, fears grew regarding the future of Ellenville's last new car dealership, Collier Motor Car Company. This past week, General Manager Carl Chipman worked his last day at the company he's been with for 26 years, and closed the doors of the business that's made Ellenville its home since 1965.

"Very sad," is how Chipman describes the turn of events. "I've made a decision that I don't want to go back into the car business because I don't like what I see in the car business. I like small places with personal service, where people aren't numbers: they're people."

Chipman says that the dealership got a letter from General Motors back in May saying that the franchise would not be renewed, a fact which he shared with his staff of 12. As they prepared to appeal the decision, like many of the small town dealerships likewise affected across the country, GM filed for bankruptcy in June. At that point, Chipman knew they were sunk.

"When they did that, that allowed GM to really negate all the franchise laws that they have," says Chipman. "There are certain laws that are there to protect dealers in their agreements. GM, if they had not gone into bankruptcy, would've been faced with lengthy, lengthy litigation, because dealers were all arming themselves and ready to go into litigation over this. As soon as they filed bankruptcy, federal law superseded the state law."

While the dealership closed on Friday last week, the service center will remain open through the end of October, after which the last Chevrolet dealership in Ulster County will close. "It's going to be another vacated building in Ellenville," says Chipman.

Over the months since the news hit the dealership, several staff members have been able to find other work, but there are still a few workers who are left high and dry by the dealership's closure. One such victim is Dave Collier, the owner of the dealership who took over for his father, Bill Collier, in 2001.

"It's hard for him to go looking for another job, because if someone hired him right now, he can't say, 'well, I gotta wait until my dealership closes,'" says Chipman. "It's kind of difficult for him. It's the only job he's ever known, working here."

According to Chipman, there were four criteria that GM used to decide which dealerships would close.

"One of them was sales," he says. "Another was customer satisfaction � we were always one of the highest on the east coast. You hear dealerships bragging about their CSI scores; well we were always at the top of the list on that. Another one was on capital liquidity, which we were okay on, and the other one was projected profitability. Unfortunately, those criteria really played against small town dealers."

Chipman recalls the better days when Schrade, VAW, the Nevele, and Ellenville National Bank provided an economic base on which the dealership thrived. If you needed your car serviced and you lived in town, Collier's would pick up your car for you while you were at work, service it, and bring it back, allowing you to drop by to pay your bill at the end of the day � something the dealership did because it was a part of the community.

"Unfortunately, those things don't show up on graphs and things for General Motors," says Chipman.

As the supervisor for the Town of Rochester, Chipman's economic situation is secure for the next two years, as he is running unopposed for this upcoming election. But his concern right now is for the people of the Town of Wawarsing and the Village of Ellenville, who depended on the dealership both in terms of service and also for the taxes it generated and the contributions it made to various community causes.

Worse still, Chipman believes that Collier's could've weathered the storm.

"We've been through economic downturns all across the decades, and we've always survived," he says. "We would've survived this last one. We started seeing daylight this last spring, and then we got the letter. We would've stayed here as long as we could. David would've carried on his father's business, and I, another 20 years from now, would probably be getting my gold watch."