Allan Appel photo
Mikhila Pingili and Carlos Eyzaguirre at Friday's renovation ribbon cutting.
When Stop & Shop announced last year the planned closing of what turned out to be 32 stores across five states, city economic officials and the Greater Dwight Development Corporation (GDDC) went into action.
Their aim: To make sure the Whalley Avenue supermarket, an anchor for the community, would not be on the list.
The advocacy paid off, and on Friday morning, GDDC Assistant Director Mikhila Pingili and Deputy Economic Development Administrator Carlos Eyzaguirre were on hand along with Stop & Shop brass — not just to celebrate that the 150 Whalley Ave. store remained open, but also to cut the ribbon on an extensive renovation.
The changes occurred over a 12- to 18-month period without the store being closed. They feature bright and shiny new floors, decor, an upgraded self check-out section, a feeling of new technology all around, and a more open and inviting floor plan.
“It’s a fresh new look,” said Sarah Williams, Stop & Shop’s local marketing manager. She also called particular attention to 800 new products the store has begun to carry, “with significant multicultural assortments.”
Although they’re dispersed throughout the store, those new products, like very large bags of rice by Goya and a cornucopia of jerk sauces and glazes, are gathered around what Williams called a multicultural “hub” at the entryway to the store beneath a polyglot welcome sign worthy of the United Nations.
All this reflects the growing multicultural population from Jamaican and Caribbean cultures, along with African Americans and Latinos who are the store’s customers in the Dwight neighborhood, Williams said.
Over the course of the renovations and the restocking, Stop & Shop relied not only on what their research told them the demographics might be calling for, but also on the food and other recommendations of the store’s employees, many of whom live in the neighborhood, said Williams.
And then there’s something else that makes this particular Stop & Shop have an unusually neighborly relationship with Dwight: The store’s landlord is the GDDC, which developed the land 30 years ago, attracting initially the Shaw’s supermarket, and then, when it closed, Stop & Shop.
“It’s a gathering place,” said Linda Townsend Maeir, one of the founders of GDDC, who was on hand for the Friday festivities. “It’s where people come to find out what’s happening in the neighborhood.”
The previous, long-time Stop & Shop store manager, Anne Demchak, is now retired from that job, but she serves as the chair of the board of the GDDC. The new store manager Jeff Page, only on the job for a short period of time, has begun to attend the community management team meetings.
And to put icing on the cake of what officials billed as the celebration of a “soft reopening” in the new look and format, Stop & Shop also presented $7,500 to the food pantry at the Augusta Lewis Troup School.
It’s the third year of such support and goes a long way, said officials from the school who were also in attendance, to underwrite school events such as the annual multicultural lunch, which unfolds around Thanksgiving.
The kindergarten through grade eight school has 300 kids attending, said Tamara Green, who manages the pantry. Increasingly they comprise not only the large Hispanic and African American populations in the neighborhood, but also kids and their families from Haiti, Jamaica, Afghanistan (about 30 students), and the countries of Africa.
“We encourage our families to shop here,” said Green.
Roger Wheeler, the president of Stop & Shop (with more than 300 stores across five New England states) added, “This is not a faceless store. A store like this is part of the lifeblood of the community.”
Because there are very few supermarkets in New Haven, the city keeps close tabs on them, said Eyzaguirre.
While there was never a threat that the store was actually on a list of closures that were being contemplated in 2024, you just never know, said Eyzaguirre, and city staff jumped all over providing the company with statistics, information, offers of helpfulness.
“The advocacy helped bring the store to their attention, why it was so important to the community,” Pingili added. “And the renovation is indicative that Stop & Shop intends to stay.”