After almost 15 years in the neighborhood, the Blockbuster video store on East 204th Street has closed its doors due to rising rent, according to a spokesperson for the national chain.

The store’s closing took both neighbors and employees by surprise.

A “For Rent” sign appeared in January, and the store officially closed on Feb. 15. By late last week, all that was left was a clean-up crew carrying shelving to a dumpster. The employees, like the stock of DVDs, were scattered to other stores throughout the region.

In the neighborhood, the word on the tip of every tongue was Netflix, the mail-delivery service which has taken a chunk out of the DVD rental market by allowing customers to get DVDs delivered to their front doors.

“With Netflix, you can get everything on-line,” said Vike Mangal, of a grocery across the street from Blockbuster. 

But Randy Hargrove, a Blockbuster spokesman, said the Norwood store closed for exclusively local reasons: Blockbuster could not come to an agreement with the landlord on a new lease.

“[Blockbuster] would have continued in that location had we been able to come to an agreement on the lease,” he said adding that the company has six other stores in the Bronx, and there are no plans to close any of them.

Nick Napolitano, an area resident who has used the 204th Street Blockbuster since 2004, said business there appeared solid.

“On Friday and Saturday nights I felt like it was pretty steady in there,” he said. “[There was] always a line at the register.”

Napolitano is stymied by the landlord’s logic. “I can’t imagine why they’d raise rents, driving out tenants in this climate,” he said. “You’d think they’d be trying to hang on to them.”

Jennifer Markowitz, the building’s property manager, did not return calls seeking comment.

Blockbuster’s exit leaves the neighborhood without a local movie rental store. According to Roberto Garcia, who works with 204th Street merchants and is director of the Jerome-Gun Hill Business Improvement District, the last local independent video rental store, on Gun Hill Road, closed about four years ago.

Garcia said the neighborhood faced more than the loss of a convenient rental store. He called Blockbuster an “anchor store,” which brings business to an area and bolsters business around it.

“Big stores like that attract people – people go to the area because the store is there, and then shop at a bodega or McDonald’s along the way,” he said, adding that he hopes whatever business moves in provides a new anchor that isn’t more of the same, like a 99-cent store.

The next business should “provide a service so people stay in the district instead of going somewhere else. We need another anchor.”

Woolworth, the anchor of Main Streets all over America, occupied the same space for many years before it closed and gave way to Blockbuster.

Another longtime area business, James Shoes, shut its doors for good earlier this winter after 30 years on 204th Street. The retail space left by the sneaker and clothing store remains vacant.

Ed. note: This article has been changed from the original version because of a misquotation.