Mt. Hope: What’s in store

Talk
about a slogan with a place-name that works. “Meet Me on Mt. Hope” tells you
where to go, in a very positive way, and how to feel.

            The invitation will soon make a
monumental debut.

            Artist Achille Forgione Jr., whose
studio is on Mt. Hope Avenue just south of Crittenden Boulevard, recently
received a grant to create metal “silhouettes” to adorn light poles along the
thoroughfare. He says he’s also working on a “welcoming sign” with the
neighborhood slogan. The sign will be installed on Mt. Hope near Westfall Road,
where the city of Rochester meets the town of Brighton.

            Forgione says he’s had his studio at
this location for 22 years. In that time, he says, mostly “positive changes”
have occurred in the Upper Mt. Hope area. He views it with an artist’s eye:
“St. Anne’s Church becomes more beautiful all the time,” he says. But he
mentions a new bank across from his studio, too.

Thus the
sacred and profane mix along Mt. Hope. That’s not to say profanity — though some
people may have resorted to this after hearing the latest news. Just before
Labor Day, Wegmans Food Markets announced it would close its Mt. Hope store, at
the corner of Crittenden Boulevard. The decision will cause one of the
neighborhood’s hopes — a general feeling that the area needs a booster — to
go south.

            Wegmans spokesperson Jo Natale says
the store will be shuttered by Thanksgiving. Two weeks’ notice will be given
before the actual closing date, she says.

            Why this decision now? The store,
says Natale, “has been operating at a loss for some time.” The decision is a
180-degree turnaround: As recently as spring 2003, stakeholders in the area
assumed Wegmans was about to renovate and upgrade the store.

            “We indeed had pursued a plan to
remodel and do a modest expansion,” says Natale. But this simply “didn’t work
out,” she says. The costs of renovation, she says, “were much higher than we
originally estimated… In designing the store, we realized how limited the size
and selection would be.” The site also didn’t allow for expanded parking, she
says.

            Some Wegmans critics have pointed to
the success of the company’s East Avenue store, which is located near another
section of the Brighton town line. Like Wegmans’ other city outlets (there are
now just three, the third being on Driving Park Avenue), the East Avenue store
draws users of public transportation and pedestrians as well as motorists. If
East Avenue can make it, ask the critics, why not Mt. Hope?

            Natale says it’s a matter of
capacity. The Mt. Hope store “is less than half the size of East Avenue,” she
says. Moreover, she says, Mt. Hope shoppers tend to “pick up convenience items
but do their major shopping elsewhere.”

            So where does Wegmans go from here?

            First, there’s the matter of jobs:
“All of the employees [at Mt. Hope] will be offered jobs at other stores,” says
Natale. She says the company is looking at other potential sites not far from
Upper Mt. Hope. Top on the list is the state-owned Rochester Psychiatric Center
property on Elmwood Avenue, near the intersection of South Goodman. “We have
expressed interest in the property” to state and city officials, Natale says.

            Will Wegmans consider selling the
Mt. Hope store to another operator? “It would be unlikely,” says Natale, “that
we would sell it or lease it to another food store.”

All this is
news,
as we’ve said, to the neighborhood.

            According to the spring 2003 issue
of the Upper Mt. Hope Neighbors newsletter (see www.umhn.com), residents and
company representatives sat down last March and discussed the renovation plan
in detail. The newsletter published an engineer’s drawing of the new store. The
drawing indicated the store would be expanded by around 50 percent, to 34,000
square feet. The design, says the newsletter, included amenities like a sushi
bar, a café, and streetside landscaping.

            The UMHN was under the impression
that work would be completed by mid-2004.

            Then in the waning days of August:
bang.

            “They came to us as an organization
and suggested we host a public presentation on what their layout would be for
the new store,” recalls Bob Good, UMHN president. “They came with a big show, a
Power Point presentation, elevations. They gave us the timeframe, and that’s
the last we heard.”

            Good says he’s now skeptical about
company claims that a new, expanded store won’t work at the current site. He
also has a theory about why the present store declined: “They put out an
inferior product over the last years, so it got a tepid response from the
community.”

            Like other neighbors, Good points
out that the University of Rochester River Campus and Medical Center — and
particularly places like Goler House, which sits just behind the current
Wegmans — offer a steady customer base. But he puts emphasis on social
concerns, too. “There’s a larger picture of a fabric of community that they
[i.e. Wegmans] are a part of. A good, solid grocery store is key to a
neighborhood, a tremendous public-health good.”

            Kitty-corner to Wegmans Mt. Hope
sits South Presbyterian Church, which has its own relationship with the store.

            Pastor Jamie Kenyon, a 19th Ward
resident who shops at the Brooks-Chili and Pittsford Wegmans as well as at Mt.
Hope, explains. “We have members who don’t have transportation and walk here,”
she says. “They use the store as their sole resource for food. I will take
someone [to the store] if they come to the door and need food to take to the
shelter.”

            If the store were renovated, says
Kenyon, “more of my parishioners would shop there. I’d be really surprised if
[the store] didn’t prosper.”

            She sums up: “There are times when
you make a commitment to a community because it’s the right thing to do.”

But what if
Wegmans moves to the Psych Center property on Elmwood? Wouldn’t that be a win-win
solution? After all, the Elmwood site is just a bit more than a half-mile from
Mt. Hope.

            There are problems with this,
however. First, say some critics, the distance to the Psych Center site from
the River Campus and the Strong Neighborhood is not walkable enough. And
besides, they say, the Tops Friendly Market on South Clinton between Elmwood
and Westfall already covers that general area. (The prospect of more
head-to-head competition with Tops might attract Wegmans there, of course.)

            Then there’s the question of
appropriateness. The Psych Center property sits across from residential
neighborhoods and a section of Highland Park, not to mention some contested
open-space immediately to the south. A similar situation exists in the town of
Henrietta, where Calkins Road-area neighbors are concerned about plans for a
Wegmans superstore across from their homes.

            Nancy Wrobel, a member of the Azalea
Neighbors, which represents the residential area across from the Psych Center,
says her group hasn’t fully processed the issue yet. “We’re all trying to keep
in touch with each other,” she says. “The people who have called me have been
upset” about the closing plan as well as Wegmans’ possible move to Elmwood, she
says.

            Rochester Mayor Bill Johnson says
both the Psych Center property and the Iola Campus at Westfall and East
Henrietta roads are “problematic.” (The Iola site is on the Wegmans wish list,
too.) The company, says Johnson, “has actually coveted the [Psych Center] site
for some time.” But “bringing a commercial development” to the Iola site “would
create all sorts of traffic problems,” he says. He notes that traffic planners
are already working on existing traffic congestion there.

            Johnson says he and other officials
are meeting regularly with Wegmans management. But essentially, he says, this
“is a private market decision.” The company, he says, doesn’t have the
responsibility of assuring grocery services in any neighborhood. “To be fair to
Wegmans,” he says, “they don’t build small stores; their model is to build
superstores” of 100,000 square feet, not 30,000 or 40,000.

            City officials, says Johnson, also
have been speaking to University administrators to see if Wegmans could expand
the existing store and parking lot onto University-owned land at Elmwood and
Mt. Hope. He mentions a “third option,” too: Wegmans “could actually sell the
site to another supermarket, if they’re willing to reconsider,” he says.

            “We’re going to be working very
aggressively,” says Johnson. Wegmans executives, he says, “don’t want to be
perceived as uncaring. They are talking. They’re not closed-minded. Their
corporate social responsibility has to be re-engaged.”

Some people
view developments from the trenches — or rather, the sidewalks.

            One such is Doc Weinberg, a
pedestrian, bicyclist, and self-employed person who lives off Mt. Hope a few
blocks north of Elmwood. “I’ve been shopping at Wegmans for 18 years,” he says.
“It would be a great inconvenience and expense,” he says, if the store were
closed. “I’d have to pay for a cab to go to Tops,” he says.

            How about the Psych Center site? “I
would probably walk to that,” Weinberg concedes. But he obviously prefers the
current store. “A lot of people badmouth this Wegmans, but it suits my needs
ideally.”

            If Wegmans carries out the plan to
close Mt. Hope, some people will be brainstorming options beyond the ordinary.

            For example, Jon Greenbaum, a Metro
Justice staffer who’s been a produce manager at both the former Genesee Co-op
Foodstore and a Wegmans suburban branch, wonders if an independently owned IGA
store might be cultivated. Though it’s actually global in reach, IGA is a
network of affiliated stores under local control. “The world doesn’t need
more supermarkets,” says an IGA puff promo. “It needs more Community Centers… a
community hub owned and operated by the very people who know the area best, the
citizens.”

            This angle requires an attitude
change, and Greenbaum provides. “Good riddance to Wegmans,” he says. “This is a
challenge for the city, an opportunity to create a community-owned market.”

            He recalls that in the 1930s, a
“second wave” of cooperatively owned and operated stores were opened across the
country. These co-ops, he says, “were set up by immigrants” and “are still
functioning.” (The Upper Midwest, for example, was a proving ground for
producer and consumer co-ops dealing in everything from plywood to groceries;
the co-ops flourished among Scandinavian and other immigrant groups steeped in
the philosophy. Food co-ops of this sort are not necessarily natural-food
stores; they’re often quite traditional, apart from their ownership structure.)

            Here some critics say Wegmans would
compete — read: underprice — a community-owned store to death. But the same
dynamic would affect any store that trespassed on Wegmans’, or any chain’s,
self-defined turf.

            But if Wegmans’ does close the Mt.
Hope store, a pattern will almost be complete. In recent years, the company has
abandoned stores at Midtown Plaza and on Culver Road near Bay Street. The
former re-opened under new ownership; the Culver Road site now is home to a
big-box drug store.

            In April 2003, not long after
conferring with the Upper Mt. Hope Neighbors, Wegmans announced the opening of
its 65th store — in suburban Downington, Pennsylvania.

This article appears in Sep 10-16, 2003.