Zak Stone Photo
Dwight is going through an “unexpected, horrible divorce” — with a supermarket. So Linda Townsend-Maier told neighbors at a standing-room-only gathering. It was clear that she will not make this “emotional journey” alone.
Some 70 citizens and representatives from a wide array of organizations packed into the Edgewood Avenue police substation Tuesday evening for a meeting of the Dwight Community Management Team. Attendees aired their concerns about life in the neighborhod after central New Haven’s only supermarket — and Dwight’s economic anchor — closes at the end of the month.
Townsend-Maier (at right in photo), executive director of the the Greater Dwight Development Corporation (GDDC), took the chance to set the record straight about the closing of Shaw’s supermarket, which has fueled a considerable rumor mill. Concrete details of a strategy for finding a replacement market will have to wait until next week’s meeting with the GDDC’s consultants.
In mid-February, Shaw’s corporate parent SuperValu announced plans to close all 18 Connecticut Shaw’s stores. New Haven’s store was one of only two supermarkets passed over for buy-outs by chains like Stop & Shop. Shaw’s demise will eliminate more than 100 jobs and leave the central city without a single large food retailer, as early as late March. Click here to read a back story.
Townsend-Maier said that the GDDC will work with the community to do “whatever it takes” to keep a grocery store in the Dwight Place shopping center. Even though the GDDC owns the shopping center, Shaw’s controls the space until 2019, when its 20-year lease will expire. The GDDC was among the original collaborators who brought the market to Whalley Avenue in 1998, a project hailed by The New York Times as the ‘“first inner-city store” for Shaw’s.
Townsend-Maier said that Shaw’s has several options: It could abandon the space and keep paying rent while it remains vacant. It could find a full service supermarket or several smaller entities to take over. Or it could get the GDDC to buy out the rest of the lease.
An official from the Shaw’s real estate division did not return a call for comment Tuesday.
Dwight Management Team Chair Florita Gillespie said the neighborhood needs to organize to try to steer the center’s destiny. “Life is not about waiting for the storm to pass; it’s about learning to dance in the rain,” she said. The Community Economic Development Clinic at the Yale Law School, the Whalley Avenue Special Services District (WASSD), the Greater New Haven Central Labor Council (GHCLC), the New Haven Food Policy Council (NHFPC), the CT Food Bank (CFB), and many other offices have already joined in the “dance” by pledging their support.
Townsend-Maier said that the GDDC was devastated by news of the closing, which caught them entirely off-guard with only weeks to “identify a new operator.” She compared her level of shock to the feeling brought on by being part of an “unexpected, horrible divorce,” during which your husband sends nothing more than a “text message” to say, “I’m leaving town … Don’t try to find me.” GCCD was among the groups (along with City Hall, the Local Initiatives Support Corporation, and Yale) that helped put together the deal that brought Shaw’s and the shopping center around it to town.
Sheila Masterson (pictured), head of the (WASSD), vouched for Townsend-Maier that the GCCD has been working on the problem since the “very moment” it found out in mid-February. “Linda was on the phone with brokers” immediately, said Masterson.
Attendees at the meeting Tuesday night wanted to know why their Shaw’s was not bought up by another retail chain as most other Connecticut Shaw’s were. Although Townsend-Maier said that she did not want to speculate, she suggested that supermarket execs are hesitant to take on an urban neighborhood.
“Perceptions of what urban areas are all about still linger on,” Townsend-Maier. Corporate decisionmakers probably assumed that they would not turn a profit given the socioeconomics of the Dwight neighborhood, she said, although market research would show that the store’s clientele extends way beyond Dwight to shoppers throughout the New Haven area, given its central location. Masterson agreed that the supermarket’s site, on a bus line in a high-density neighborhood, is among the market’s greatest strengths.
Community Concern
Food Bank Programs Director Kate Walton worried aloud about the lack of “food security” that neighbors will face when Shaw’s closes. For many car-less residents of Dwight and downtown, Shaw’s is the only affordable option for fresh food, she said. The “impact is going to be felt within days” of the store’s closing, transforming the area in to a “food desert” once more. The shelves at Shaw’s are already gradually going bare in the run-up to the closing.
Others attendees, like Jeffrey Boyd (pictured above) from the GHCLC, expressed concern about the future of Shaw’s employees, who will most likely struggle to find new work in a dreary economic climate. He said that the “super-majority of Shaw’s workers” hail from the immediate low-income neighborhood. He pledged his organization’s best efforts to help find a replacement store to provide employment for the displaced workers.
One such worker, Lossie Gorham (pictured above in blue jacket), spoke up at the meeting. She said that her co-workers at Shaw’s “are devastated that they might not find anything” in the way of new work. She said that current employees know “the exact type of store” that’s needed as a replacement, and ought to be “grandfathered into what is coming.”
Several participants were eager to see Shaw’s replacement challenge the corporate status quo. Tagan Engel from the NHFPC asked if the GDDC had considered other models around the country like co-ops in Philadelphia or Boston that carry everything form local food to generic brands. Such a store “would reach everybody in New Haven.”
Another neighbor agreed that the GDDC ought to consider something other than “a large corporation” that will regard New Haven’s store as “just a number on a sheet.” He cited the recent pull-outs of Staples and Rite Aid down the block as evidence of the failure of corporate development on Whalley. Townsend-Maier said her group would discuss different grocery store models at next week’s meeting.
Dispelling the Rumors
Townsend-Maier spent much of the meeting dispelling rumors generated in the absence of hard facts about Shaw’s closing. For example, she’s heard many people making false comparisons between the respective closings of Shaw’s and Staples. In reality, Staples did not have the option of renewing its lease and did not leave on its own accord, she said.
And the rumors that discount grocer Save-a-Lot is what’s coming next? Townsend-Maier said while she would not be in favor of that store “as a shopper,” the GDDC would not “be able to do a thing” about it should SuperValu make a deal with Save-A-Lot. “This is business,” she added, and SuperValu could very well “leave the story black” if it wishes. (SuperValu owns both Shaw’s and Save-A-Lot.)
While many are hoping that Stop & Shop or ShopRite will come to Whalley, Townsend-Maier called those scenarios improbable, since those chains most likely were offered New Haven’s Shaw’s and declined. Transitioning a supermarket is not something that large companies rush into, and it’s probable that the new owners of the 16 Connecticut Shaw’s have been planning the change for “six months or longer,” Townsend-Maier said.
While rumor has it that the rent was too high for Shaw’s on Whalley to get by, she said that the management never approached her about lowering rents, which could have been arranged.
One piece of good news is that the New Haven Shaw’s wasn’t the only one closed, said Townsend-Maier, which would make the location appear particularly flawed to potential replacements. Furthermore, the GDDC and its partners have experience in luring a major grocery store to town, after going through the process in the late 1990s.
“And we’re better at it than we were 10 years ago,” Townsend-Maier added.