HOLDERNESS — The owners of the Squam Lake Inn have taken over a shuttered general store in the center of town, where they are employing more than a dozen people.

Squam Lake Market Place opened July 30 after Cindy Foster and Rae Andrews acquired it at an auction earlier this summer.

Foster and Andrews, who have operated the inn with its kitchen and bar on Shepard Hill Road for almost a decade, also own the Red Barn gift shop, next door to the inn.

The former Holderness General Store closed last year.

“We felt that this was the heart of the community,” Foster said Thursday morning, comparing the importance of the general store to an anchor retailer in a mall. Without that centerpiece, she said, business goes elsewhere, and it hurts the entire community.

Foster said the plan was to quickly reopen the store for summer and close after October to renovate. Foster and Andrews have yet to decide whether the business will be open year-round.

The store features local produce, dairy, and select meats, a deli and general-store items, along with gifts and candy.

It has a dock on Little Squam Lake, which allows boaters access by water.

Foster said the community has been overwhelmingly supportive of the efforts to open the store. Its location at the corner of Route 3 and Route 113 provides great exposure, which the inn does not have, tucked up on Shepard Hill Road, she said.

The inn’s kitchen and bar are open in the summer and serve lunch and dinner.

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