New owners reviving many stores SR-based chain was forced to close last fall BACK FROM BANKRUPTCY

Bradley Video, the homegrown video chain that went bankrupt last year after expanding aggressively, is back in business with fewer locations and a new Florida-based owner.

"It's just good to be back," said Chris Lopez, operations manager for seven Bradley Video stores that have recently reopened, including four in the North Bay.

The company filed Chapter 11 in August, and was in the process of closing unprofitable stores when owner William Bradley was forced to file Chapter 7 bankruptcy and close the chain's remaining 11 stores Oct. 31.

The Santa Rosa-based company had just celebrated its 20th anniversary.

"The employees were a little upset," recalls Corrie Burrage, the 26-year-old manager of the newly reopened Rohnert Park store on Snyder Lane. "They didn't have a lot of notice."

But even as the stores were being shut there was talk about employees buying some of them out of bankruptcy and reopening.

Kathey Hochderffer, former accounting manager at Bradley Video, and her husband, Bob, bought the assets of the chain's flagship store on Mission Circle in Rincon Valley, reopening it Dec. 1 under the banner Bob's Video.

Around that same time, Lopez, the area manager for the chain, was negotiating with WestAmerica Bank, Bradley's largest creditor, to purchase the video stores in Concord and Campbell.

Another company, West Coast Video, was also bidding on the remaining Bradley assets, including the rights to the Bradley trademark, when Lopez and West Coast Video "decided to work with each other instead of against each other," Lopez said.

Both agreed that keeping the chain as intact as possible and continuing with the Bradley name was the best way to get the chain back on its feet, Lopez said.

"It is someone else's name, but it's a good name, and it's a respected name, especially in the North Bay, but even here in the East Bay, too," Lopez said.

West Coast Video, which once had over 200 stores mostly on the East Coast, ran into financial trouble in 2000. In 2001 the chain was purchased by Phoenix Restructuring Group, a division of Tampa, Fla.-based Video One Liquidators, which continues to run the chain.

Lopez and West Coast executives decided to reopen seven of the 10 stores they acquired,

The company worked throughout December to reopen four North Bay locations - Snyder Lane in Rohnert Park, Marlow Road in Santa Rosa, Sebastopol Road in Sebastopol, and Novato - as well as stores in Reno, Concord and Campbell. The chain closed unprofitable stores on Sebastopol Road in Santa Rosa, Antioch, and Concord, Lopez said.

A handful of Game Cage video stores, including stores in Windsor and Sacramento, were closed over the summer by Bill Bradley as he struggled with the heavy debts he incurred during a period of rapid growth, Lopez said.

One Game Cage location - the one inside the Rohnert Park store - was reopened.

"Bill expanded and diversified too rapidly," Lopez said.

Loyal customers returned to the stores immediately upon their reopening, many with stories about bad experiences at other video stores, Lopez said.

"In a way it was kind of a good thing because it made them appreciate what Bradley Video was really offering them," he said.

Naomi Magdaleno, 31, said she was happy to see the Rohnert Park location reopen because it has a better children's section than competitor Blockbuster Video.

"It's great," she said of the store's reopening Friday as her 4-year-old son, Damian, hunted for videos. "Plus it's only two blocks from our home."

Despite stiff competition from video-on-demand services and mail-order DVD services like Netflix, Burrage said she thinks the neighborhood video store, for the moment, is still a viable business. The selection of video-on-demand is poor and the mail-order DVD services make no sense to her.

"I don't know what I want to watch two days from now. I know what I want to watch tonight," she said.