It's always sad when a local lab either stops c-41 processing or closes down, but it all has to do with volumn. If there is not enough film being processed then it's not worth their while. C-41 machines need a certain through-put to keep the chemistry balanced, that volumn depends on the machine.
I know of one lab that bought a batch of out of date film just so the could keep volumn up on the processor. Sadly it didn't last and they too stoped c-41.
One other point I have noticed is that a lot of labs that do or did film processing never advertised or pushed it enough. They only try to push it in the dying days and by that stage it's too late.
I have my own shop/minilab and have tried a few different promotions to encourage film processing. My most sucessfull to date was a huge poster in the window(wild west style), WANTED YOUR FILMS, we still process films. It doubled the film input over the following 2 weeks.