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DAN LORENTZ
OPEN LATE
Starting Dec. 1
OPEN TIL 3AM
TUES-SAT
WHAT’S UP IN NEW DEVELOPMENT
A Grocery Store in Every Neighborhood:
Because nearby grocery stores do so much
to make daily life more convenient, they are
rightly considered by city planners to be the
key building blocks of walkable neighbor
hoods. Imagine a local economic development
strategy that focused on attracting and help
ing to locate a full-service grocery store
within easy walking distance of every in-town
neighborhood resident. Imagine that the
strategy was successful. You would see Athens
transformed into one of the most walkable
small cities in America.
Adding the "most walkable” distinction
to Athens' existing assets—the University of
Georgia, lively music and food scenes, a great
downtown, its location in the South—would
make life sweeter for current residents and
would likely prove to be powerfully attractive
to businesses, workers and retirees.
But implementing a "grocery-store-in-
every-neighborhood” strategy faces high
hurdles. Some of the hurdles are generated by
regulations. Others, the highest hurdles in my
view, are erected by our car-centric lifestyles
and expectations.
The 300-Foot Hurdle Among Others: In my
last column, I wrote about how I'd love for
there to be a grocery store that offered a good
selection of produce, canned and dry goods,
meat, dairy products, household stuff and
wine and beer at the corner of Chase Street
and Dubose Avenue—a location that's just a
block from my house in Boulevard.
perceived need for lots of exclusive-use park
ing spaces means that they'll only consider
very large parcels—which can be hard to find
or assemble in in-town neighborhoods.
How We Shop Now: By my count, there are 12
full-service grocery stores serving the Athens
area. This includes both large-format super
markets like Kroger and Publix and smaller
formats like Bell's, Earth Fare and Trader
Joe's. If you map them out, you'll see that—
except for Earth Fare—they tend to be located
on or near the periphery of town. According to
the American Planning Association, contem
porary supermarkets—typically about 45,000
square feet of store space—require the sup
port of about 8,000 to 10,000 people. By my
crude estimates, this holds true here in Clarke
County.
What do the square footage, the store loca
tion map and the customer base numbers tell
us? That—for the most part—we get our gro
ceries at large stores that we drive out from
town to get to. We're used to doing this, and
the market is largely built to accommodate
these expectations. And this, I think, repre
sents the highest hurdle facing the prospects
of walkable neighborhood grocery stores.
Changing Trends: But there are signs that
walkable neighborhood grocery stores might
have a bright future. Plus, let's remember that
a smaller-format, full-service grocery store
like Earth Fare (18,000 square feet) in Five
Points is already making it in the current
environment. Other super
market chains—like Whole
Foods, Sav-a-Lot and Harris
Teeter—are beginning
to experiment with more
compact formats that can
tuck into denser areas more
easily.
I asked Matt Forshee,
president of the ACC
Economic Development
Foundation, to crunch some
numbers about a couple
of locations in Athens. An
estimated 2,443 people live
within a half-mile radius
of Earth Fare's location
on Lumpkin near Milledge
Avenue. About 14,000
people live within a mile
radius. Compare that to the numbers associ
ated with where St. Joseph's Catholic Church
is currently located near the corner of Prince
Avenue and Pulaski Street: 3,503 people
within a half-mile, and more than 15,000
within a mile. This site is in Boulevard, across
the street from Cobbham and kitty corner from
downtown. (The church is planning to move to
another location.)
There's a lot more to consider than just
these numbers when looking at where to
locate a grocery store, but they do provoke
a hopeful "Hnwim..." (Not so fast: Live Oak
Morning School, a private pre-school, is right
across the street. Arrgh!)
A Proposal: With so much to gain from creat
ing a more walkable city, I think the next ACC
Mayor and Commission should at least seri
ously consider adopting an economic develop
ment strategy that recognizes grocery stores
as the cornerstones of walkability.
Dan Lorentz athensrising@fiagpole.com
A grocery store here at the corner of Prince Avenue and Pulaski Street?
Maybe someday? Please?
No doubt there are other reasons why there
is no grocery store on this comer, but the fact
that it would be illegal for a grocery store
to sell beer and wine at that location is one
clear reason. Unless your business got grand
fathered in, you can't—under current state
law—sell beer or wine within 300 feet of any
school grounds. The grounds of Chase Street
Elementary School are less than 300 feet away
from my imaginary grocery store. So, that
location is out. The rule likely excludes many
other plausible in-towri locations.
Of course, alcohpl regulations aren't the
only hurdles to locating grocery stores in res
idential neighborhoods. When it comes right
down to it, some folks still aren't comfortable
with the idea of integrating coffee shops, res
taurants, bars or grocery stores into their own
neighborhoods. Zoning ordinances and plans
review processes often reflect and reinforce
this desire to keep commercial and residential
areas separate—even when the kind of com- •
merce being considered can make daily life
more convenient. On the part of retailers, the
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NOVEMBER 17,2010 FlAGPOLE.COM