Photo by Todd Weddle / St. Joseph News-Press / Purchase this photo

Patrons look through stacks of discounted DVDs Monday afternoon at the South Belt Highway Blockbuster. The store is closing and moving to the join the other Blockbuster on the North Belt.

Customers can expect some good deals on movies and video games as Blockbuster closes one of its stores in St. Joseph.

“We’ve just gotten to the point where it was a sound business decision to have the one store and combine inventory,” said Jason Barrow, manager of both Blockbuster locations.

The South Belt store, located at 1317 S. Belt Highway, began reducing prices on all of its products last week and plans to complete its move by Nov. 1.

“Every single day I’m lowering the prices on a different section,” Mr. Barrow said. “They could be as low as $1 by Sunday. Some already are.”

Both Blockbuster locations are franchisee owned and based in Wichita, Kan.

Mr. Barrow said that ideally Blockbuster wouldn’t have placed two stores within 1.8 miles of each other. The South Belt store was initially a corporate Blockbuster. When the franchise built a second location at 2101 N. Belt Highway, it took over the corporate store.

“We didn’t build it but we just continued running it,” he said.

The consolidation can hopefully beef up Blockbuster’s single store.

“We’re making it bigger and better,” Mr. Barrow said.

Since eliminating a store will increase traffic, Mr. Barrow said he sees no immediate plans to cut staffing.

A franchise spokesperson said the company could open another location in St. Joseph in the future.

On a corporate level, Blockbuster announced earlier this year that it could close as many as 960 stores nationwide by the end of next year. The decision comes as the Dallas-based company tries to recoup its loses to Netflix and Redbox.

According to its Web site, Blockbuster hopes to have 10,000 kiosks scattered across the country. It had just 500 kiosks at the end of August. The company has been trying to evolve by embracing kiosks and expanding into rentals delivered through the mail and the Internet.

But Blockbuster’s total revenues for the second quarter of 2009 were down to $1.02 billion, compared to $1.30 billion in the same period the previous year.

Jennifer Hall can be reached

at jennhall@npgco.com.