Today's news that Trimingham Brothers will close can be taken both as a cautionary tale and as a sign of the times.

It's a cautionary tale because the landmark department store's decision to take over rival and neighbour HA&E Smith was always a risky gambit, given the weakness of the Island's retail sector, the changes in shopping tastes from spacious department stores to mall-style boutiques and the decline of tourism on which so many Front Street stores depended.

But, for some of the same reasons, and many more, the closure and the purchase of the flagship store by the Bank of Bermuda, shows definitively how Bermuda has moved being a tourism-oriented economy to one dominated by international business.

It should also show, once and for all, that the days of "Front Street" exerting outsize political and economic influence over the Island are over.

Nonetheless, this closure is above all about business. Many observers were sceptical about whether Trimingham's could make the takeover of Smith's work because the two businesses were so similar. While both companies were privately held and guarded publicity about their financial health carefully, it was fair to ask whether two businesses that were said to be marginal at best could be turned around once they were joined together.

It's likely that it would only have succeeded if Trimingham's had rapidly cut staff and merged departments to achieve the economies of scale and buying power necessary to make the deal pay. For whatever reason, that didn't happen and now it would appear it could not secure the long term financing it needed to carry on.

To some degree, this may have been inevitable. Shopping tastes have radically changed since the days when department stores dominated. Front Street, once an upmarket series of department stores has changed dramatically in the 20 years since tourism began its long and slow decline. Overseas shopping by residents clearly has had an effect as well.

Even what is now the last of the big three department stores - A.S. Cooper - has seemingly adapted to the change by spreading its businesses into a number of smaller locations. While that has been done to make way for a new building, it has no plans to take back up all of the space it previously occupied. That may turn out to be a better strategy than the one Trimingham's adopted.

No doubt the debate will continue long after today over whether local retailers failed to adapt and caused their own demise or whether successive United Bermuda Party and Progressive Labour Party governments could have stemmed the decline by cutting Customs duty and reducing the tax burden on local companies. But it's fair to say that there is plenty of blame to go around.

Still, the reality is that Bermuda's economy is markedly different than it was in the 1970s and early 1980s when the local retailing business was booming.

It can also be argued that once upon a time friendly banks - largely owned by the same "Front Street" families - would have extended enough credit to get a major business through its problems rather than taking the property for themselves. Again, times have changed and the Bank of Bermuda, now owned by a giant corporation for which Bermuda is a mere speck, clearly, for better of for worse, has different priorities.

But this is a sad day. Trimingham's was much more than a store; it was a symbol of Bermuda's tourism heritage and its closure will leave the Island a less interesting and vibrant place.