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WHAT'S UP IN NEW DEVELOPMENT
Trader Joe's Opens: Trader Joe's, the specialty
grocery that sells cheap wine (nearly-two*
buck Chuck), low-cost organic staples and
affordable exotic treats in an offbeat atmo
sphere that tries to evoke the feel of an old-
fashioned neighborhood grocery store, just
held a grand opening ceremony last Friday for
its newest location: in Oconee County at the
Markets at Epps Bridge, a suburban mall across
Epps Bridge Parkway from Walmart.
My deadline for this column comes two days
before the opening, but unless an act of God
prevents it, I'll be at the store sometime this
weekend perusing its hard-to-find-elsewhere
wares and discount wines. Even though I know
I'll be driving to Trader Joe's because it's a
Wake Up: If you're familiar with my neighbor
hood, you might be inclined at this juncture
to point out, as a friend of mine did, that I
live about a half-mile from Daily Groceries
Co-op on Prince Avenue. This is true. It's
not a hard walk for me at all, though crossing
Prince can be nasty. The store stocks lots of
great produce, bread, coffee and other staples.
And it's a sociable place.
I talked to Michael Wegner—a former Daily
Groceries manager, musician and fellow neigh
borhood resident—about the store. He lives
about four blocks from the store and says he
goes there almost every day. "It's the perfect
distance for me to bring Amelia along," he
says, referring to his five-year-old daughter.
The arrival of Trader Joe's re-sparks dreams of a real neighborhood grocery.
specialty store—and not because it's a tradi
tional grocery, despite the interior store design
effects—when I'm there I'll be thinking about
what's missing from my neighborhood: a
full-service grocery store I can walk to.
A Grocery Store Dream: When my wife and I
came to Athens about three years ago, we fell
in love with Boulevard and its proximity to
downtown from the start and bought a house
located in the middle of the neighborhood
on Lyndon Avenue. Butalmost as soon as we
finished moving in, I started dreaming of a
neighborhood grocery store. In every other
city we've lived in, we've been able to walk to
a decent-stead grocery store—and I had got
ten accustomed to that
So I began daydreaming of a grocery store.
I found a great location for one just a block
from my house in a big parking lot at the cor
ner of Chase Street and Dubose Avenue—kitty-
comer from Chase Street Elementary School
And it had a name: Green Thrift Grocery.
While it would be a small-format store-
just 10,000 square feet (considerably smaller
than, say, the SO,OOO-plus-square-foot Kroger
on Alps Road)—it would be full-service.
At Green Thrift; you'd be able to get fresh,
locally grown foods in season and protty
much wrorythtog else a conventional store
has to offer (even if these'd be slightly fewer
choices), including beer and wine.
The store would have a street-toeing coffee
shop ano where you could vWt with neigh
bors.
"With the store so close, I just come by every
day or so and get what I need," he says. He
says sometimes they don't have exactly what
he had in mind to cook that night but he'll
find something. "And it's fresh, and I don't
have to plan out meals for a week."
Which is what I want to be able to do,
too. But Daily Groceries doesn't sell meat or
wine. And that means I'd have to work in
a few other stops to complete my rounds.
There is bottle shop not too tor from me, and
Los Com padres, for example—on Prince in
Normattown—is fairly walkabte for me and has
an impressive meat counter. I'm going to tort-
run the frolMUty of doing my mote or less
daily shopping on foot ia my neighborhood.
An Earth Fare in or Near Boulevard: But I sus
pect I'll still be pining for a full-service store
like the Green Thrift Grocery of my dreams—
or another branch of the reality-based Earth
Fare, for example—to locate near me. Now, as
another friend of mine suggested, maybe my
wife and I should have bought a home ig Five
Points—where Earth tore le located—so that
we could be near a smaller format futt-service
grocery with a coffee shop, which is obvi
ously so important to us. But tor a variety of
reasons, including that we just dfdnt feel tthe
we'd be oood Five Points material, we chose
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