Count me among those shocked to hear that the brand new Food Lion store on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, which has been open for just over 10 months, is slated for closure. At the store’s groundbreaking on March 30, 2011, a store official told the Savannah Morning News,
“We are dedicated to being Savannah’s neighborhood grocery store.”
Apparently that level of dedication was not shared by Food Lion’s parent company, Delhaize America, which announced today it is closing 126 “underperforming stores.”
The store’s closing is a blow on multiple fronts, not least of which is the loss of jobs.
In July 2010 Savannah Morning News columnist Tom Barton wrote a column called “Crossing a ‘food desert,” in which he suggested:
“In terms of re-energizing this struggling corridor south of the I-16 flyover, this project isn’t just big. It’s humongous…There’s nothing like having a clean, well-stocked, competitively priced and convenient place to buy food and other necessities to make any area more desirable and contribute to healthier lifestyles.”
Here’s hoping a new tenant can be found quickly.
Maybe Whole Foods will come in… or something similar. Although, they might have to revisit their pricing strategy… they’re not nicknamed Whole Paycheck for nothing. But if they could bring more local, healthy products in, at reasonable cost, seems like it would be kind of awesome.
I WISH whole foods would come downtown! Considering median earnings, tho, I doubt it.