ESTEVAN - The auction for the retail liquor store permit in Estevan and five other communities has wrapped up, and it drew a lot of interest for the Energy City.
The auction began on Feb. 8 and wrapped up Thursday afternoon. It wound up selling for $1,407,500 through an unreserved online auction conducted by McDougall Auctions.
The bidder was under the name of Liquormerchants. A total of 128 bids were received.
The highest bid was sitting at over $300,000 as of Thursday morning at 11 a.m. But a rush of bids came in starting at 11:47 a.m.
The auction could have closed at 2 p.m., but it didn’t wrap up until a bid didn’t occur for 10 minutes. The final bid for Estevan was submitted at 2:44 p.m.
The entity that purchased the retail permit will receive only the permit. Estevan’s government-owned liquor store closed on Feb. 11, and the ownership of the store building has transferred back to the Estevan Market Mall.
Auctions for a permit in each of Regina, Saskatoon, Moose Jaw, Assiniboia and Moosomin also closed on Thursday. The final auction to close was just before 6 p.m. for the Moose Jaw permit.
There will be multiple auctions for Regina, Saskatoon and Prince Albert due to the number of liquor stores owned by SLGA in those communities.
The provincial government announced last fall that all government-owned liquor stores would close by the end of March this year.
