SOUTH PORTLAND – What is believed to be the oldest business in South Portland’s historic Knightville district has changed hands.

On Aug. 1, Tom Smaha sold Smaha’s Legion Square Market at 101 Ocean St. to Alan Cardinal and Sylvia Most, both of Scarborough.

Smaha, 68, said Tuesday he felt “both good and bad” about selling the family grocery store, where he started out stocking shelves as a 14-year-old boy. The important thing, he said, was finding a buyer who would maintain the legacy of the store, known for having the largest full-service meat department in greater Portland, all cut to order.

“The name is staying the same, all the people are the same, the only thing changing is the guy sitting in the corner,” joked Smaha on Tuesday. He will stay on for 90 days to help with the transition as the new owners, who also purchased the building, get up and running.

“There is no immediate change that is coming into play,” said Cardinal, noting that Smaha’s, in business since 1939, has a “beautifully rich tradition.”

“There’s a lot of loyalty, with some employees who have been here for a couple of decades and customers have been coming here through the years,” he said. “I think we will continue the tradition of how things are, providing a wonderful selection at a great price point.”

All of the staff, roughly 20 full- and part-time employees, will be retained, said Cardinal.

“There are all so wonderful, it takes a little bit of the scare out of the transition,” he added.

Cardinal is coming off of a career as a human resources executive, for companies including Wright Express, Hannaford Bros., Delhaize America and, most recently, his own firm, Cardinal HR Solutions. The principal of her own management consulting firm, Most also has logged time as a math teacher in Regional School Unit 14 (Windham/Raymond) and as campaign manager for Steve Abbott’s 2010 gubernatorial campaign and finance director for Susan Collins’ 2008 re-election bid. She was a town councilor in Scarborough from 2001-2008.

Cardinal said Tuesday that he and his wife decided to “make a change” to get into a family business they could run with their sons, ages 19 and 23, “so we could spend more time together.”

They only looked at a few options before finding Smaha’s for sale and deciding “it was perfect for us.”

Smaha said that, with none of his own children interested in taking over the market, he had been mulling a sale for “about a year.” Cardinal and Most came along at just the right time, he said, noting the business was only on the market for “a couple of weeks.”

“I had expected it would take a couple of years,” he said.

Cardinal declined to say how much he and Most paid for the Smaha block and the store.

Smaha’s was founded as a two-aisle Columbia Market, part of a string of stores associated with Portland’s Columbia Hotel, by Tom Smaha’s uncle, Herb, in 1937. Smaha’s father, John, was an employee at the time. He bought the store and renamed it in 1939, expanding it to its current 5,000-square-foot size in the 1950s. Smaha tried big-city life, taking a managerial job with Stop and Shop in Boston after graduating from University of Maine. But, within a year, Smaha returned home, and soon after, in 1967, took ownership of the market.

Tough times came in the 1980s, when the end of Maine’s blue laws that kept larger stores closed put a crimp on the store’s Sunday monopoly. Then, in 1997, the opening of the Casco Bay Bridge diverted the 30,000 cars that whizzed by the store each day.

Still, Smaha persevered, even up until a few months ago when he appeared at City Council meetings to protest plans to change the angled parking in front of his store to parallel spots. That’s a battle Cardinal said, he will take up.

“I certainly have a preference on angled parking,” he said. “I hear it over and over again, drivers just have a distaste with parallel parking.”

On the other hand, once Ocean Street construction is complete, Cardinal said, he expects Knightville to come to life with wider sidewalks, better lighting and a “wonderful neighborhood feel.”

However, the parking issue is resolved, Smaha said he’s confident Cardinal and Most will succeed, maybe even besting Cardinal’s former employer down the street.

“The way we’ve always done business is to just focus on quality products,” he said. “That won’t change.”

But if there are any changes, that will be somebody else’s decision to make. At the end of the 90-day transition period, the only decision Smaha will be need to worry about it how to spend his retirement.

“We might travel some,” he said, “but other than that, I really don’t know right now.”

Alan Cardinal and Sylvia Most
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