The locations on Grandview Road and East Second Street closed their doors last month with no official reasoning behind the exit.
“We knew about the situation before it happened,” Alliance president John Phillips said Friday. “We are working on it.”
Phillips said the Alliance is using its industry contacts to try to draw interest.
“We are letting them know that there are ready buildings and they are in a market that can support it,” he said. “There is a lot of grass roots going on.”
Phillips said one obstacle is the organization doesn’t have all the information about the condition of the buildings, which will be requested by potential tenants.
“It’s still early in the game,” Phillips said.
Local attorney Bob McFate owns the building on the North Side and said there was nothing to report as of Friday morning, but he is hopeful a new tenant can be found sooner rather than later.
The East Second Street location is owned by BSP Associates LP of Pittsburgh.
Riverside Markets previously occupied the buildings that Thorne’s will be vacating. Henry Stricek, who had been the manager of the Grandview Road store for a number of years, purchased that store from Riverside in 1985.
In 1997, Riverside Markets changed its name to Bi-Lo as a result of a corporate decision by parent company Penn Traffic of Syracuse, New York. Stricek sold his store to Bi-Lo that same year.
Thorne’s Neighborhood Markets assumed ownership of the two stores in 2004 after Penn Traffic announced the markets would either close or be sold during the first quarter of 2004 as part of the company’s bankruptcy reorganization efforts.
