East Avenue Wegmans: keep it ‘special’

            I was
shocked and dismayed to read of your proposal to demolish buildings on East
Avenue extending from your store to Winton
Road. The parcel contains a number of small
structures that are assets to the community and could be an asset to your
expansion project if they were saved and cleverly incorporated into your plans.

            From what I
read in City Newspaper, you plan to
double your existing floor space and fix the parking shortage. Being a
long-time shopper there, I understand the importance of those problems. But
part of why I enjoy going there to shop is that the location itself is so
special. In fact, it’s the very sort of high-density, small-scale surroundings
you plan to demolish that make the East Avenue
store worth visiting.

            Surely with
all its resources, Wegmans could find a way to include the shops and historic
structures along East Avenue
in this project — in their entirety, not as mere facades. This is admittedly
a tough problem, one that will require creative thinking, cooperation, and
compromise. But it is also a real opportunity for Wegmans to show the same
progressive thinking in designing an urban-friendly shopping experience that it
has shown so consistently over the years in the suburbs.

            You have a
lot to work with here. Within a block of your store are an old church, a
factory, a restaurant, numerous small stores, tidy residences, a gas station,
and mature street trees. Your central location could tie it all together.

            You could
do some really neat things. As you are no doubt aware, the site was once the
center of the original Brighton village. At least one of
the structures dates to that time. You could design a shopping experience that
would include browsing the street of shops, something a bit like Boston’s
Faneuil Hall. Maybe you could use that parking structure behind the bank
somehow, to get people out of their cars and walking around. Then promote the
authenticity and charm with a name like “OldBrightonVillage.”
Wegmans could really do this right.

            The
atmosphere at East Avenue Wegmans makes it a fun place to shop. It’s a place
where you go — really just to mingle, to enjoy the buzz of city living.
Places like that can’t be built all at once; they must evolve — and that
makes them special. A suburban-style footprint would be convenient, but the
magic would be lost. It would be like every other store.

            There is an
opportunity to design an amazing venue here, one that works with the community
and enhances the interest shoppers have found there for years. It’s the kind of
investment our city needs right now: to make our streets exciting again, to
build on a human scale, to retain links with the past, and to nurture a sense
of place.

            Please keep
East Avenue Wegmans special.

            Jim Fraser, Rochester

This article appears in Jun 2-8, 2004.