Daily Archives: August 7, 2008

General News

Do we really need a grocery store in Sheridan Village?

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I didn’t get a chance to go to that meeting last night about Sheridan Village. But in talking about it with some friends, it made me wonder why another big box grocery store is opening up in that part of town. You have Kroger right across the street in Evergreen Square. And you have Schnuck’s just up the road at Glen and University. Isn’t it inevitable that one of the existing stores will close? Meanwhile, South Peoria has almost no grocery service at all.

I thought I’d check out some recent supermarket history, and culled the following timeline from Journal Star articles (closures in bold):

  • Early 1994 — Cub Foods opens at Glen Hollow Shopping Center.
  • Nov. 1996 — New Kroger (54,000-60,000 square feet reported) opens in Evergreen Square — replaces old, 27,000-square-foot Kroger in Evergreen Square.
  • 9/16/1998 — Super Wal-Mart opens on East Peoria riverfront.
  • 11/9/1999 — Schnuck’s (reportedly 87,000 square feet) opens at Glen and University. They tried for years to build a store at Glen and Sheridan, but were pushed back by neighbors and environmentalists. One of the big arguments against that site: it’s right across the street from another established grocery store, Ben Schwartz.
  • 12/31/1999 — Ben Schwartz, Sheridan and Glen, closes.
  • 3/2/2000 — Eagle Country Markets, 1401 W. Glen, closes (Chapter 11 bankruptcy)
  • 8/12/2002 — Cub Foods (65,000 square feet) opens at Midtown Plaza on Knoxville. Developer David Joseph got $5.5 million in city incentives for this project and eminent domain power to wrest away little old ladies’ homes on Dechman. This project was going to “revitalize the East Bluff.”
  • 9/25/2002 — John Bee Food Shop, 3419 N. Prospect Road, closes, citing big box grocery store competition. “‘When the first Cub store opened, things started turning downhill for independents; it became a trickle down effect,’ he [owner John Barnhart] said. ‘We did manage to survive them, but then came Schnuck’s. And the SuperWalMart came in and it was a big kick in the head.'”
  • 11/15/2002 — Sullivan’s (formerly Thompson Food Basket) on Knoxville and in Campustown both close.

Now Hy-Vee is coming to Sheridan Village, right across the street from another supermarket. How does this serve the needs of the people in the immediate area or Peorians in general?