Thomas MacMillan File Photo
Jesse Hameen II shopped at the old Shaw’s; now there’s a new option.
Central New Haven will have a supermarket again, now that Stop & Shop has agreed to take over the old Shaw’s on Whalley Avenue.
Stop & Shop announced its decision in a release Tuesday. (Read it here.) It estimated that the move will bring 130 new jobs to New Haven.
Linda Townsend-Maier, who helped broker the deal as director of the Greater Dwight Development Corporation (which owns the property), said the new store should open some time in the spring. Stop & Shop is doing renovations first to the space.
City Building Official Andy Rizzo said Tuesday that Stop & Shop has not put in any requests for permits yet for the interior renovations. Representatives from the supermarket chain walked through the building a few weeks ago and showed the city some preliminary plans.
Townsend-Maier said that based on the drawings she has seen, the store should look like other Stop & Shop outlets, such as the one on Amity Road by the Woodbridge-New Haven border.
Amy Murphy, director of communications for Stop & Shop, said the store will be a full-service grocery with floral, deli, seafood, and bakery sections. The press release states that the store will have a bank and pharmacy. The store will also stock a variety of products to meet the ethnic diversity in the area and the needs of the nearby student population, she said.
The store will hire about 130 full- and part-time “associates,” she said. Store hours have not yet been determined, but most Stop & Shop stores are open from 6 a.m. to midnight, seven days a week, Murphy said.
Murphy said Stop & Shop is hoping to open the new store as soon as possible. The company is “very committed” to bringing a low-cost supermarket to an underserved area, she said. “We’re really excited to partner with the local community.”
Thomas MacMillan File Photo
Shaw’s, just before the end.
The surrounding Dwight, Whalley and Edgewood neighborhoods have clamored for a new supermarket since it became a “food desert” last year.
The main retail space in the Whalley Avenue shopping plaza has been vacant since March 2010. That’s when the Shaw’s store shut its doors, leaving 100 workers without jobs and New Haven without a grocery store.
Shaw’s parent company, Supervalu, announced the departure one year ago, in February 2010. It was part of the company’s departure from Connecticut. Eighteen Shaw’s stores in the state were sold or shut down.
Since then, community and business leaders have been working to bring a grocery store back to the location. Neighborhood meetings were held, and neighbors lamented the loss of a major supermarket within walking distance.
Yale, Greater Dwight, the Whalley Special Services District, and City Hall worked together to try to lure a new occupant for the vacant store.
“The collaboration that went on between all these diverse groups and the stakeholders in New Haven is a big story,” Towsend-Maier said. “That doesn’t happen very often. Nobody got paid. Everybody put in hundreds and hundreds of hours.”
Mayor John DeStefano Tuesday also praised the community effort to land the store.
“This was a neighborhood driven. The neighborhood did a great job of defining the need and indicating it would work with the operators. It also indicates the importance of access to groceries,” he said.
New Haven has been a so-called “food desert,” broken only by the promise of a new food co-op opening downtown at new mixed-use tower, 360 State.