A view of the exterior of the recently closed Whole Foods on Miller Avenue in Mill Valley, Calif.

One of the country’s very first Whole Foods stores closed permanently in late September. Grocery stores close all the time. But residents of Mill Valley who frequented this particular Bay Area Whole Foods are having a hard time letting go.

After calling it a community hub for more than 30 years, many have been irked that Amazon, which owns Whole Foods, could not find the money to save the store. In the hopes of raising awareness and pressuring Amazon to act, they started a petition that has now garnered over 2,000 signatures. However, in the end, it does not seem like those signatures will bring the store back. 

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“We all in the community have supported that store for years and years and years,” Jana Hildebrand, a Mill Valley resident of 30 years, told SFGATE in a phone interview. “And now, when the community needs the support of a very powerful company with deep pockets, they are just walking away, saying it’s too expensive to fix the building.”

Opened in 1992, the Mill Valley Whole Foods at 414 Miller Ave. was a beacon of community before it closed permanently just weeks ago. It was a place central to the Mill Valley populace, where residents like........

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