St. Charles mainstay Regole's Harvest Shoppe abruptly closes
A St. Charles business that has been around since 1963 has closed with no fanfare.
A roadside sign at Regole's Harvest Shoppe on Kirk Road says it's closed, and directs shoppers to go to Bob's Salt and Feed in West Chicago for supplies. A hand-scrawled notice on the shop's main entrance reads: "Regole's shut doors down."
Disappointed customers were seen turning away Wednesday morning.
"They had the best prices," said Monica Mitchell of Elgin, who said she came there every two months to buy hard-to-find large bales of rabbit hay.
Regole's, which started as a feed store, transformed into more over the years. Besides feed, it sold pet foods, pet-care items, horse-care supplies, gardening fertilizer, temporary buildings, horse fencing, sheds, gifts, bird feeders and more. It also sold plants in the spring, and sometimes sold Christmas trees. It hosted pet adoption events and clinics on animal care.
There are no signs on the business indicating why it closed. Merchandise is still on the shelves.
The land it sits on is owned by the Edward N. Regole Revocable Living Trust. Regole could not be reached for comment. His wife, Vivienne, when reached in Arizona, said they did not want to talk about the business nor its closing.
Edward is one of five children of the late Gertrude and Maurice Regole, who owned and farmed much of the land near Kirk Road and Route 64 in St. Charles where several business parks, shopping centers and a church now sit.
The store was run in the 1990s through at least 2004 by one of his nieces and her husband.
There are also barns, a corn crib and a house on the property. Telephone directories do not indicate who lives in the house, and no one answered the door this week.
Files at the Kane County Recorder of Deeds indicate the Internal Revenue Service has filed nine tax liens against the business, going back 10 years, for unpaid taxes. Several of the tax bills have since been paid, but there still remains an unpaid total of $500,193, according to documents. Over the years the Illinois Department of Revenue also filed tax liens totaling $235,194, but those have been paid and released.
The latest federal tax lien, for $16,827.62, was recorded Oct. 26.
The kind of tax indicated on the liens is IRS 941. Form 941 is a quarterly employer's tax return, where employees' wages are reported, taxes such as Social Security and income tax withholding calculated, and employer payments of those taxes reported.
An IRS representative would not discuss details of the case due to taxpayer privacy laws, nor confirm or deny if any enforcement action is being taken.
The Illinois Secretary of State Business Services division lists a Regole Limited Partnership as having voluntarily canceled its certificate as of Nov. 24. The relationship between Regole's Harvest Shoppe, Regole LP and Regole Asset Management Corp. is not clear. The attorney for the partnership and the corporation is the same attorney who has handled Regole family affairs, including the trust. He has not returned phone calls.
In 2003, Edward and Vivienne Regole donated 34 acres in northwestern Illinois to Marmion Academy, his alma mater, so it could sell it and use the proceeds to build a new swimming pool.