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5 comments:
Sounds like you may be righteous, brother and sister.
Looks like the only game in town in Columbia City will be the Wal-Mart. I don't believe there are any other grocery stores in C.C.
What a shame! Fewer and fewer choices for consumers.
Hi Dave,
You may be right about the possibility of redevelopment of the area, however remember that this area is PRIME real estate. The value of this property alone might make it cost prohibitive to most retail ventures.
I'll admit that I was extremely upset over the announcement of its' closing. If you live in the heart of downtown or surrounding area, this is a hop, skip and a jump away - always open location. Where are those downtown going to go for groceries? It just means driving even further for the basic staples to Walmart or Scotts. Of course, now that Scotts is owned by Kroger and their prices have decreased somewhat, it's not as bad a prospect as before the Kroger take-over.
To give Kroger credit, they've tried over the years to do different things to enlarge the retail space they have, but face it, the store is land-locked and will probably always remain under-utilized. The only way to rectify the situation would be to tear down and start over with a complete redesign of the store.
I brought up the possibility of a grocer being part of Harrison Square with Fort Wayne Deputy Mayor Mark Becker. My impression from his response is that the development really won't involve retail stores as much as entertainment-type venues and restaurants. He felt a major grocer in the downtown area is several years out and would be more along the Harrison Street corridor. (Sorry to drag Harrison Square into this. lol)
My whole point is that the city should be aggressively focusing on drawing a major GROCER (please read GROCER and not repeat not WALMART, TARGET or KMART) to the downtown area. We need something - especially if the downtown takes off and more people want to live down here.
The only other thing I'll add is it will be interesting to see what happens with the fuel station Kroger built. Will it stay? Remain Kroger? Or be sold with the property? Perhaps even Kroger is working on building something better, bigger and in the downtown area?
Who knows?
Stephen,
Great post! It is troubling that the surrounding neighborhoods are losing such a convenient location.
In some of the discussions I've had with the North River Task Force, the issue about local shopping was raised. The consensus seemed to be that if the right attraction is arranged for the OmniSource property, it would not be a stretch to see retail ventures spring up in the neighborhoods around the Fourth St/Wells Street area to support local residents. CVS/Walgreen's and others were mentioned, but I like your idea about a local grocer vs. a WalMart megastore. It would be great to encourage family-style shopping opportunities for daily needs in the area.
Keep in mind - this is a pattern in the downtown and surrounding area. Two of the three hospitals have beat a retreat to the suburbs, and we have almost no retail downtown. As long as we have boards and commissions who literally approve every subdivision and commercial building project, we will have flight to the outlying regions of the city. I hope that Harrison Square reverses that trend.
I will be interested to see the logic behind the closing. I don't think the store would have necessarily needed to expand to avoid closing.
Our family had a small grocery store of 10,000 sq feet in South Whitley for 30 years. I was born a month after they purchased it in January of 1948 (okay so I am old), so I literally grew up in the business. We had fewer choices, but we still had all we needed as far as food variety.
Consumers have gotten so used to dozens and dozens of choices and mega stores with bright shiny attractions that a truly "normal" grocery store does not really exist anymore. Smaller stores cannot compete with the buying power of the mega stores. We ultimately sold in 1978 because of that fact. The large stores such as Kroger and Scotts in Columbia City and Huntington and North Manchester were bigger and had better leverage in purchasing in large quantities. Plus the drive to other towns for "bargains" was becoming more common, and as the surrounding towns grew, our customer base decreased.
The smaller grocery stores that do exist are usually niche stores such as Fresh Market or Three Rivers Food Co-op. While I enjoy going to those stores on occasion, I do not do the bulk of my shopping at them because they are usually higher in price.
An option for a grocery downtown would be Trader Joes, but it will probably be pricier than the old Kroger store. Even so, I wrote to Trader Joes to suggest a new store location in the vicinity of the Harrison Square project or in downtown, in general. Smaller stores will probably be "niche" stores or will be somewhat more expensive.
The West State Scotts is a viable alternative to the Kroger store, although a little farther for some. Unfortunately, the trend is to bigger and bigger. Add to that the apparent trend of moving away from downtown, and those of us who believe in downtown have a real challenge on our hands. But the downtown is worth the effort, and I hope that the new projects reverse those trends.
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