There aren’t
too many announcements that can make city officials giggle, but the news that a
grocery store is coming downtown had officials and their ilk positively ebullient
at a press conference this morning.
Hart’s
Local Grocers, a locally run grocery store, will open in the former Craig
Autometrics building at 10 Winthrop Street in Rochester’s East End as early as
May. The 20,000-square-foot building is between the Little Theatre and Restaurant
2Vine.
“This
is a fantastic space for this use,” said Heidi Zimmer-Meyer, president of the
Rochester Downtown Development Corporation.
Downtown
has been without a full grocery store for more than a decade. And it is the
number-one thing people who live and work in the city ask for, Zimmer-Meyer
said.
Hart’s
will offer a mix of groceries, including organic food, and will get
approximately 20 percent of its product from the local community, said Dean
Sparks, Hart’s general manager, in a press release. It will also offer national
brands.
Glenn
Kellogg, an urban planner and the man behind the project, said that the store
would afford affordable, quality products — rejecting the suggestion that the
store could be exclusively high-end.
He
said the store will focus on local, natural, and sustainably provided food.
The
store has 130 parking spots, Kellogg said, which is more than it needs for peak
times.
Delmonize
Smith, the city’s commissioner of Neighborhood and Business Development, said
that the project would likely get city support through a tax agreement, loan,
or other arrangements.
This article appears in Jan 8-14, 2014.
Why are tax payers subsidizing businesses. If there is a demand for this business, it should stand on its own two feet. There are lots of businesses through out Rochester that had to take the risk all on their own, they did not receive any help to get up and running and I say, we don’t here either! This is a form of corporate welfare.
The City’s master plan was recently presented to the public in a series of planned meetings both downtown and in several neighborhoods. While there were many details in that plan ,one of the overall statement made in the Plan was the importance of not only addressing needs of persons leaving downtown but that Downtown is for everyone and should symbolize that reality. Part of this plan added the feedback obtained from earlier residents to include some retail and a grocery store. The grocery store planned for the former location of Craig Automotive near the Little theater will appeal to some who live in that area of the City but once again the City offering tax breaks has failed to pursue the possibility of a grocery store that would be for all the City as identified in the goals of the Plan. In the info given by Mr. Kellog the owner of the new store focused on the service it would provide to the areas primarily in its immediate location. While this does not mean that only residents living in that area can use the store , it is clear that the location is designed once again to attract those of higher means. Is this consistent with the idea of the Master Plan being for all the people? Once again the City has limited vision. The more relevant vision for a grocery store could have been to consider how to bring people across class lines both living downtown and in the City’s neighborhoods together to be creative and look at a co-operative grocery model. This would have addressed one of the City’s most serious problems namely, the huge gap between the have and have nots. Such a model would require people from locations across the City to come together to develop a community grocery store featuring local produce and other products with an outcome that assures not only green sustainability but enhancing greater social connections across lines that are often divided. Tax subsidies and supportive funding could actually go to address the greater good. What a novel idea!